Gen Z speaks out on the simple act that brings them to tears, and the fun clickbait game we re supposed to play is to guess which simple everyday activity brings these young adults to tears. And it s sort of a trick question because literally any simple everyday task has that potential, but in this case the activity is making a phone call.
00:02:42.540And it continues with more examples of young people who go to elaborate lengths to avoid phone calls or who prepare for a phone call, like it's the MCATs or something.
00:02:53.580I'm not sure I've ever spoken on the phone to someone in Gen Z before for any, like, extended period of time, but I'm sure I have.
00:03:01.940But if I ever do again, now that I know that they're writing their responses ahead of time, like, it would be fun to throw some stuff at them that they didn't prepare for.
00:03:31.760I, uh, uh, wow, all right, I, and then it just bursts into tears.
00:03:37.120And that's how I imagine the conversation going, which would be kind of funny.
00:03:39.780Now, of course, as far as Gen Z is concerned, uh, this all has very little to do with phone calls per se.
00:03:46.540Um, the problem is much bigger than that.
00:03:48.620And this is why I emphasize this all the time, because it's, I think it's something that we still hasn't quite, it doesn't quite sink in for us.
00:03:54.140They are the first generation of humans in world history to be raised in an environment where a majority of their communication is not done through spoken language.
00:04:07.380For every other generation of humans that has ever existed, almost all of the conversing that they did on a daily basis, almost all of the communicating they did on a daily basis, was conducted, whether in person or by phone, through spoken communication.
00:04:21.520But for Gen Z, most of them were in elementary school and, and, uh, the rest weren't even born when the iPhone was introduced.
00:04:31.540And so they've had smartphones since they were young children, a lot of them.
00:04:34.540And so a majority of the conversation interaction that they have on a daily basis since they were small children has happened through that device using visual communication.
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00:05:48.000Now, millennials are barely in a better position.
00:05:50.440Smartphones took over our lives right around the time we graduated high school or college, depending on how old we are.
00:05:56.560And so our adult lives have been dominated by these devices.
00:06:02.360But for Gen Z, their entire lives have been consumed by them, which is to say they don't really know how to speak to people.
00:06:51.680And then, like, how does this problem compound itself?
00:06:54.720What does the exponential growth look like years from now when you've got another generation who were also raised on the phones, almost all their communication visually, but they were raised by parents who themselves were raised that way?
00:07:14.380I think idiocracy, people say it's prophetic, but idiocracy from what I remember, they went 500 years in the future and people, you know, the average IQ was like 70 or 60 or something.
00:07:26.380I think if things, if something doesn't radically change, in the next, like, 150 years, I think people are going to be communicating, the verbal in-person communication will basically be grunts.
00:07:48.440Now, with all that said, putting all that to the same, they are not wrong about phone calls, though.
00:07:54.780Now, they may be wrong to cry about it, but it is true that there is very rarely a good reason for a phone call to be made or received.
00:08:03.220And I was out ahead of this curve five years ago when I canceled phone calls on this show.
00:08:07.720In fact, I think that was one of the very first things I canceled when we first started this segment.
00:08:11.600It amazes me still every day that in the year 2020, there are still people, lots, even probably billions of people, who will intentionally pick up their phone, dial a number, and attempt to have a purposeful live conversation with another human being on the other.
00:08:26.120Which means that for the last five years, none of you should have been making phone calls because they were already canceled.
00:08:30.800There's no need for me to rehash it because I'm going to assume that all of you have listened to every single episode for the past five years.
00:08:36.380But on the off chance that a few of you have neglected your duties in consuming every piece of content that I have ever produced, then I will just reiterate the basic point, which is, you know, I am an advocate of face-to-face human communication.
00:08:49.160I'm not necessarily a fan of that either in every context, but it's a bad time, Bob.
00:08:53.480From a personal and civilizational perspective, it is the most worthwhile and productive form of communication.
00:08:59.260But long-form writing, like writing books and letters, is second to that.
00:09:04.840And then what you have online is distant behind it.
00:09:08.860But if you're going to communicate with someone in a non-face-to-face format, it can almost always be handled quicker and more efficiently with a text or email.
00:09:16.960So, you know, we've all been in a situation where you send somebody a text with a simple question or statement, and horrifically, they call you to respond to it.
00:09:26.720Like you send them a text, and then you look down, and you see their number popping up on your phone.
00:09:30.860And there are a few feelings worse than that.
00:09:34.840Not feelings that you're going to cry, but just like a mixture of irritation and befuddlement.
00:09:42.940It's just like, what are you, why are you doing this?
00:10:03.700It's like, for all this time, you just, whatever you want to say, just say it.
00:10:07.380It's not, and then we schedule it, and the day finally comes, and we do our little call.
00:10:12.460And it turns out that whatever needed to be said could have been said in the very text that were used to schedule the call in the first place.
00:10:19.960So the problem is that most people really have no idea, and this goes back to a lack of spoken communication.
00:10:27.980They have no idea how to end a conversation, especially one that's happening on the phone, because a lot of the verbal, a lot of the visual cues are not there.
00:10:35.580So the discussion that should be, by all rights, 30 seconds long becomes five minutes or 30 minutes.
00:10:40.660As the few sentences they needed to convey have already been conveyed, and now it has to be padded with, like, 50 pounds of small talk.
00:10:48.960To the extent that Gen Z is objecting to all of that, they're actually fully justified, and I feel it's necessary to point that out.
00:10:56.860In fact, you could make an argument that phone companies should be mandated to disable the phone function, like, the actual phone function on the phone should be disabled,
00:11:05.300because there's really no reason why anyone needs to use it for that purpose anymore.
00:11:10.300Like, if they do have phones, it should only be to make phone calls and not to do any of the internet stuff.
00:11:15.360So you have to adjust the laws accordingly.
00:11:18.000Better yet, I guess, I guess what it comes down to is probably we should all just toss our phones in the ocean and be done with the whole thing.
00:11:26.260Might not be the healthiest for the fish, but it would be better for us.
00:11:30.220But until that happens, I'm not going to judge Gen Z for their phone call aversion.