“It seems rude to me to call the cell phone without warning. If it’s not an emergency (and it’s not my parents) don’t call me, we have WhatsApp for something.”
This tweet from @thaissotillo It went viral a few days ago and generated responses of all colors, but with the feeling that it is a generational issue: at some point, for those born especially in the late 90s onwards, telephone calls – the most basic gesture of a telephone – have become a violation of social protocol.
The generational issue does not explain much: the interesting thing is not what the girl prefers, but why an unannounced call now feels like an intrusion.
A WhatsApp message gives you time. You read, you think, you decide, you write, you erase, you rewrite. You decide if it is better for you to sound warmer or more edge. Ten extra seconds to build a better version of yourself.
A call takes that possibility away from you. It forces you to be youno editing, now. That’s why it’s uncomfortable. “It’s another way to avoid direct confrontation,” he explains. Alexandra de Pedrogeneral health psychologist. “An awkward conversation always becomes less awkward when I have time to process what I want to say and how.”
we have built tode to a way of life about the right to edit ourselves before being seen. De Pedro says that many people pass their important conversations through the AI filter: “Write this to me, but in a more assertive way.” We lose the ability for direct communication while we gain resources to avoid it.
But there is something else. The call doesn’t just demand that you be yourself. Demand that you be now.
We live in an asynchronous world. We work with people in four time zones, we watch series when we want, we answer emails between meetings. Everything can wait for me to be ready.
The call shatters that illusion. It is a demand for synchronicity. It is a way of telling us “we speak now or we don’t speak.” And that, in a culture where procrastination is an earned right, feels obscene. That’s why voicemails have taken over: They transfer the call experience to something asynchronous, to have time to think about the answers.
“Young people have understood that being accessible is not the same as being available,” says De Pedro. “They practice setting limits more. But you can also go overboard and We are moving towards a society that is a little more individualistic.“.
Exceptions tell part of the story. Your parents may call you without warning. Not because they are from another generation, but because the family still operates under a previous code: that of automatic availability. You can interrupt me because you are my father.
The rest of the world lost that privilege. Now you have to write first, raise the issue, wait for confirmation. Only then, perhaps, call. The direct call is read as arrogance.
We have changed the semantics of what it means to respect others. Before it was “I give you my attention when you ask for it.” Now it’s “don’t ask me for attention without prior permission.”
We say that we gain efficiency, that WhatsApp avoids unnecessary interruptions. But what we have really done is build a wall around our emotional availability.
“It has to do with postponing everything uncomfortable,” says the psychologist. “Much lower tolerance for frustration, for uncomfortable sensations. If I find it uncomfortable to answer a friend, it’s annoying, because it costs me more and I put it off.”
The phone call was the last vestige of an ancient social contract: we accepted that others might need us in real time, without warning, without the possibility of postponement. That contract was broken.
Now we all live behind a perpetual mailbox. We respond when it suits us, not when they need us. We feel freer, more owners of our time, more protected. What we do not feel is what we have lost: the habit of tolerating the discomfort of appearing unprepared, of improvising closeness, of accepting that the other has the right to alter our day.
The phone is still in our pocket. But it’s not to talk anymore. It is to decide when, how and with whom we want to appear to be speaking.
Featured image | Xataka
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