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Comment by VeninVidiaVicii | Hacker News Reader

That’s a huge amount of people who didn’t answer. Phones are basically worthless to get ahold of people — I called about 40 students last spring for interviews and got only one answer, myself.

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Did you first leave a voicemail, text, or email as well? Most of my time I am busy. Either sleeping, working, relaxing (TV, games, friends), and only a small small fraction of my time am I doing nothing to such a degree that if pick up an unknown number call. Especially in 2020s due to spam callers.

I've noticed some people saying "kids don't pick up phones anymore" and really, no, we don't. There's more efficient and reliable communication modes available. If I could pay for a sperate set of phone numbers that were text-only, I would have that instead.

I've noticed some people saying "kids don't pick up phones anymore" and really, no, we don't.

Kids? Hell, I'm 47 and that's my policy as well. I basically don't answer unsolicited phone calls unless it's my dad or one of a very small number of close friends or family members. And honestly, even that's not guarantee that I will pick up at times.

Same (44) phone calls are for recruiters and marketing spam, so if I'm not currently looking for a job, the phone doesn't get answered

How would your dad, and the others mentioned, be considered 'unsolicited '. Possible you mean 'untimely '?

> How would your dad, and the others mentioned, be considered 'unsolicited '

Haven't been asked/invited to call?

If I didn't text/email/etc. and ask you to call me, or we didn't somehow otherwise arrange it in advance, that's "unsolicited" to me. Just being a friend/family member doesn't change that underlying premise. The difference is, if you fall into those categories I might pick up anyway, depending on what I'm doing / how I feel.

Note that he intentionally picked numbers that were unlikely to be personal phone numbers.

Spam calls have made the telephone part of my mobile computing platform pretty much worthless, and it makes me dread interviewing and needing to pick up every incoming call. I wish we could all get on the same page and just switch completely to text or email and arrange calls in that fashion.

I use my iPhone’s voicemail transcription to screen most of my calls

That seems to be part of the problem with political polling lately: practically no one answers the phone (and of course not many of those who do are willing to participate).

Spam calls have ruined phone service. I don't answer calls that I don't recognize, sorry you'll have to leave a message.

Calling people is just rude. "Drop everything you are doing and pay attention to me". No thanks, text me instead and I'll look at it when I want.

I feel the same way. I feel like I'm expected to be a business during opening hours. Also sucks that many people don't leave a text message after they call unanswered. Did someone die, did something good happen, was it a pocket dial? Call back and find out!

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