why i committed to making phone calls for a week

I do not like phone calls. The sight of a name or number flashing on my little screen gives me a cold shiver. My voicemail message says: “Hi, you’ve reached Kate Leaver, you’re better off texting me”. Obviously, I do not have a landline – don’t be absurd – and most of my life’s correspondence is done by WhatsApp, with a heavy reliance on the heart-eyes emoji. This is a perfectly valid way of existing, and I’m not the only one: apparently the phone is only the fifth most popular app. We typically check our devices 150 times a day, but very rarely do we dial any numbers. We phone-averse tend not to like the ambiguity and unpredictability of a voice call – we need facial cues or GIFs to fully understand human interaction.

Recently I’ve started to think, 'Am I missing out on some sort of vital human connection? Do I make myself more distant or cold because I’m not hearing people’s voices often enough? Am I going to get RSI in my thumbs from all the texting?' To find out, I set myself a challenge: Make and answer phone calls every day for a week.

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