Why we put off phone calls, and why it’s harder in another language

If there’s a call you’ve been meaning to make for a week, you’re in good company.

In a survey of 2,000 UK adults run by Opinium for Uswitch in April 2024, 23% of 18 to 34-year-olds said they never answer voice calls. In the same age group, 56% said an unexpected call from friends or family makes them assume it’s bad news, and 61% said they’d rather get a message.

Across all ages, the most common reason for not picking up was wanting to know who’s calling first (50%), followed by being busy (24%) and not wanting to be interrupted (23%). And 63% said nuisance and scam calls make them more likely not to answer.

For some people it’s more than a preference

The NHS lists “speaking on the phone” among the everyday things people with social anxiety can worry about, alongside meeting strangers and starting conversations. If calls are a real struggle for you, that page is a sensible place to start, and there’s help available.

We expect calls to go worse than they do

Here’s the encouraging part. In a 2021 study, psychologists Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley had people get back in touch with an old friend by phone or by email, and had strangers talk by voice, video or text. Talking by voice created stronger bonds than text, without being any more awkward. But people expected it to be awkward, and that expectation steered them towards typing.

Related work by Kardas, Kumar and Epley found that conversations with strangers felt less awkward, and went better, than people predicted, partly because we underestimate how much the other person cares.

In another language, a call is harder still

A phone call takes away a lot of what normally helps you understand someone: their face, their lips, their gestures. One 2015 study found that listeners understood speech in an unfamiliar accent, against background noise, better when they could see the speaker than from the audio alone.

Listening tends to be the hard part. In a survey of 1,023 first-year medical students in China who were learning English, listening caused more anxiety than speaking, reading or writing, across both sexes and every level of ability. A phone call is mostly listening.

Even a language you know well can cost you. In a small 2019 study at the University of Zurich, men who did a stressful speaking task in standard German instead of Swiss German showed a bigger rise in the stress hormone cortisol, even though they didn’t report feeling more stressed.

What helps

• Write down the two or three things you need to say, and the one answer you need to come away with.
• Call when you have a few minutes to think, not between other things.
• Ask people to repeat or slow down. The research above suggests they mind far less than we fear.
• For calls in another language, note the key words and numbers in that language before you dial.

And if the language is the real blocker, you can hand the call over. That’s why we built Alfred. But for many calls, the best fix is the boring one: make it now, while it’s on your mind.