Finland’s ingenuity galvanised the rapid global uptake of cellphones, so it’s paradoxical the country’s latest claim to fame should be the elevation of no-speakies to a new commercial opportunity.
Helsinki hairdresser Kati Hakomeri has divided global opinion by introducing a chat-free service. The silent hair appointment – practically an oxymoronic concept – has brought a clamour of requests to make the option compulsory everywhere – and extend it to taxis – while traditionalists have mourned another symptom of the decline of civil society.
But a recent British survey suggests taciturnity is not just for the Finns. On top of data charting 33 billion fewer minutes spent on the phone in the UK than a decade ago, a poll found a quarter of Gen Zers and Millennials claim never to have answered a phone in their lives. Unsolicited conversation is being rationed.
The young’s shunning of the telephone’s traditional function is well known, but the common assumption that it’s down to selfishness, cowardice or disrespect needs reappraisal. It’s deeper than Hakomeri’s reason for dialling back the nattering – that introverts find enforced small talk depleting. Younger phone users are refusing to be put under obligation by unsolicited incursions into their day, an imposition their parents and grandparents never questioned. It’s fair to challenge older people’s continued phone submissiveness.
For boomers’ formative years, the technology was overwhelmingly useful. If the phone spake, they scurried. Failing to answer it was unthinkable, and if you dared to leave it off the hook, as this writer once did, the authorities were allowed to transmit an ear-splitting squeal through the handset until you restored it to its throne and obeyed its imperatives. Believe it: a pile of blankets and pillows and even a bunker of stacked hard-cover books could not dim the noise.
The phone doubled as an ankle bracelet, putting people under house arrest or manacling them to desks for hours on end in anticipation of an important call. Alongside cordlessness, the advent of caller ID was arguably among modern man’s most liberating invention.
But many, possibly most, boomers cannot throw off a lifetime’s enslavement. The phone is still the boss of them; the fact that someone has called them confers an urgent sense of obligation. This is utterly illogical, but the result of years of social conditioning.
For decades, a telephone connection was a luxury, subject to waiting lists and perishingly expensive. Local calls were free, but the steep monthly expense meant they were not something to be taken for granted, and so – however illogically – parents usually rationed their children’s phone time. Overseas calls were prohibitive; a Christmas catch-up with rellies easily costing a week’s wages.
Those still in the outdated grip of “answer it” can fairly argue that other, call-averse cohorts are just as badly addicted to texts and emails. Who hasn’t stifled a huff when, during an IRL (in real life) conversation, your companion breaks off to respond to every ping?
A key difference is that texts and emails give people camouflage and time. The messager blessedly can’t see if there’s a bored or irritated face at the other end, and the messagee has time to consider an apt, polite response – most importantly, an excuse or alibi if an unwanted demand is being made.
There is a “me first” element in answer-refusal. But manners go both ways. No mannerly phone caller would wish to interrupt or inconvenience the person they’re seeking to contact. Message-only communications preserve everyone’s amenity.
However, today’s comms etiquette is way more convoluted than yesterday’s “just answer the damned phone” – given that leaving a message on “seen” causes untold angst and mere punctuation can grievously affront whoever has time to chat.
