> So I started calling people… and quickly discovered that a lot of them have a call phobia, as if human interactions were toxic. > Not in the sense that they’d be busy and would call me later. But in the sense that they wouldn’t pick up, only to text me 5 seconds later to start the conversation. If I tried to call them back, same thing again. They don’t want to talk, they want to text.

Problem with phone calls is that they are synchronous, yet quite often things callers want to resolve can be resolved asynchronously (= via text messages & emails), but you can handle those when it's convenient.

So at least I'm glad that most of my contacts send me messages in whichever messenger is convenient. We can always agree to call each other if we feel like it will be more convenient, but then it's a much different feeling then just randomly calling. Also personally 100% of "random calls" I got within last 3 years were telemarketers, so guess how often I answer the phone :-D

Edit: in general I agree strongly that dropping off social networks and in general reducing notifications noise to a minimum (and not only on smart phone but everywhere) does wonders, strongly recommend.