I've heard stories about gen-z/alpha being more app brained, but most of my peers in their early 30s are generally fine with calling people or sending an email perhaps depending on the service.
The EU
> Could the language barrier be a reason for their hesitancy?
No:
> (and it's not a language barrier problem, because everyone speaks english)
>I've heard stories about gen-z/alpha being more app brained
I think you might be on to something there, maybe it's more of a generational thing than a cultural difference between American and EU citizens.
I walk to restaurants if I can to avoid using Wolt for instance.
Then again, I appreciate that AI is probably a better driver than 60% of taxi drivers.
I also dislike ordering food by phone for practical reasons. Call quality might be bad, person's accent might be hard for me to understand, I might be hard for them to understand, the chance an error will go unnoticed even if they read back the order is higher than a website where I can read it myself, and in many cases I have to give a credit card number to a person, which has a higher probability of leading to fraud than most online payments in 2025.
But I have to admit it is a thing that is actively happening and that “phone culture” such as it was, is dying or already dead.
I feel like I have strayed far from the topic, but honestly if this is what smartphones have wrought, we should stop using them. (Sent from my iPhone of course)
I'd advise therapy to anyone who has so much phone anxiety they would hesitate to call emergency services in an emergency or who misses out on significant opportunities as a result. A mere preference for ordering food delivery on a screen driven by social anxiety does not rise to the level of a problem in my mind. Nearly everyone is irrational about something, usually several somethings.