This is undoubtedly a paradox but there is a well-defined explanation: the majority of young people are hyper-connected on a daily basis and with cell phones always in your hands they answer phone calls rarely and reluctantly. When it comes to clicking “reply” and starting a conversation that is now increasingly “old style”, they prefer to ignore it and reply with a written message on WhatsApp or Telegram and perhaps with a voice note. Everything, in short, as long as you don't speak to him orally smartphones.
The causes
The numbers of this phenomenon are growing exponentially: a percentage close to 70% according to a survey by Times proves that the 18-34 age group hates phone calls by even going in anxiety. However, if we move up the age range (from 35 to 54 years) only 1% choose not to respond and send an audio note, for example. This is a prerogative of generation Z which has become a real pathology as explained to Courier the professor. Massimo Ammaniti, psychoanalyst and honorary professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the Faculty of Medicine and Psychology of Sapienza, Rome.
“It's a phobia”
“The phobia of contact leads the boy to lock himself in his room, to no longer want to go out, to delimit and limit relationships with others“, explains the expert. In Japan the phenomenon is called “muon sedai” and concerns the decade of those between 20 and 30 years old who ignore calls but respond, even a few seconds later, with messages and chats. Ammaniti explains that the solution starts from dialogue considered fundamental and that “it must start from the parents, they must set a good example”. Despite today's freedoms, kids “they experience an underlying malaise. Having too many opportunities doesn't help them, on the contrary, because it raises too many questions for them”.
The habit of chatting
The pandemic certainly hasn't helped: very often young people themselves use smartphones to share any type of content but in a “silent”, non-verbal way. That's why there was the boom in chat and audio, for example, “all indirect forms of communication that avoid dialogue and which the experience of the Covid pandemic has favored”, explains the psychoanalyst. “ll the problem is that of contact, even if only by telephone, because they have to adapt to each other and know how to use the rules of dialogue”.
Eleonora Locci, a 23-year-old influencer with a huge following on Instagram and Tik Tok, candidly admitted to the newspaper that by dint of growing up with social media, she defended her generation.It's normal that we use our smartphone to post videos and chat and not to talk.” Unlike her peers, however, she loves being on the phone “because I have always had distant friends and relatives, between Brazil, France and the United Arab Emirates, and I need to hear their voice.
Many of my friends on the other hand, rather than replying, prefer to send messages but it's a matter of habit and of culture generational”.