Telephobia: why young people are being taught how to make phone calls

Schools and companies are teaching Gen Z how to talk on the phone because young people lack the confidence to make professional calls.

"Telephobia", or an anxiety around making and receiving phone calls, is a growing issue, with a study by comparison site Uswitch concluding that a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never actually answer when they're called.

'Literally screaming'

School coaching was offered ahead of A-level results last month, when students who didn't meet their predicted grades would be "forced" to speak to university admissions officers, said The Independent.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But that isn't the first time youngsters have been offered phone coaching. The Daily Mail reported in March that Gen Z staff at a leading UK finance firm were being "trained to speak over the phone" because "young workers are too scared to talk on their devices".

Posting on TikTok, Gen Zers have shared their absolute terror over phone calls, saying they "literally scream" when their phone rings and that unexpected phone calls are an "invasion" of their "personal space".

It stems from a fear of the unknown, said Liz Baxter, a careers advisor at Nottingham College, on CNBC. When their phone rings, young people think: "I don’t know who's on the end of it. I don't know how to deal with it". Gen Z are also "concerned with how they sound on calls" because, unlike video meetings, they've "no visual feedback to confirm how they're doing".

In a viral tweet last month, a recruiter said that when she calls Gen Z applicants at an agreed time, they often wait for her to speak first, instead of saying "hello". Replies to her tweet suggested that many shared this "alarming etiquette", said Business Insider.

This is sometimes because they guard against spam callers, who don't start until they hear someone say "hello", but also, some young people believe that if you're the one who's calling, you should initiate the conversation.

'Personal space'

But, it's not just the younger generation dodging calls who have "killed the phone call", said The Independent. A 47-year-old woman said she "would never call a person randomly out of the blue, just like I wouldn't knock on their front door unannounced – it's just not respectful of their personal space or time".

Up to 63% of UK adults have experienced phone fear, according to a study in 2020, by cloud-based contact agency Natterbox, and 26% said they would only ever make a call in the case of an emergency. In May, a survey by the Buffalo Trace Distillery found that a third of British adults "panic" when their phone rings unexpectedly.

So phone training could be a "sensible way" to deal with this "growing trend", said Huffington Post and "honestly", most of us could do with a "refresher on how to talk to one another a little better".