Y’know, I’ve been thinking it’s more than that lately. Yes, all that is true, but I think the younger generations who grew up being terminally connected to everything, always having to have a phone on them, always needing to be able to be reached by people, all their business on social media etc… I think we’ve developed an unspoken respect that when we contact people we let them respond on their own terms. If you text someone you are telling them, hey, I need something but, you can read this when it’s convenient, and you can respond when and in the method that’s convenient to you. When you call someone you are saying, I need something and I need you to deal with it right now over immediate voice chat. Yes, we can say I’m busy therefore I’ll let it go to voicemail, but in this day and age of respectful texting being the norm, we often assume a call out of the blue from a known number IS something important that requires immediate attention.
This creates a generational disconnect. Like when my phone rings unexpectedly at work, it’s 95% this one colleague in his 70s who is nice enough, but it instinctively feels rude because I feel like I need to answer. From his perspective, if I just don’t answer that’s fine and that’s the etiquette he was used to, try to call and no biggie if it doesn’t connect.
Going the other way, I know someone dealing with a person in their 80s over urgent important stuff and that person just will be utterly unreachable so much of the time. For them, there’s no such thing as “urgent enough to need immediate attention” because that was just not possible for them and society developed around the norm of folks just not being available as much.
Y’know, I’ve been thinking it’s more than that lately. Yes, all that is true, but I think the younger generations who grew up being terminally connected to everything, always having to have a phone on them, always needing to be able to be reached by people, all their business on social media etc… I think we’ve developed an unspoken respect that when we contact people we let them respond on their own terms. If you text someone you are telling them, hey, I need something but, you can read this when it’s convenient, and you can respond when and in the method that’s convenient to you. When you call someone you are saying, I need something and I need you to deal with it right now over immediate voice chat. Yes, we can say I’m busy therefore I’ll let it go to voicemail, but in this day and age of respectful texting being the norm, we often assume a call out of the blue from a known number IS something important that requires immediate attention.
This creates a generational disconnect. Like when my phone rings unexpectedly at work, it’s 95% this one colleague in his 70s who is nice enough, but it instinctively feels rude because I feel like I need to answer. From his perspective, if I just don’t answer that’s fine and that’s the etiquette he was used to, try to call and no biggie if it doesn’t connect.
Going the other way, I know someone dealing with a person in their 80s over urgent important stuff and that person just will be utterly unreachable so much of the time. For them, there’s no such thing as “urgent enough to need immediate attention” because that was just not possible for them and society developed around the norm of folks just not being available as much.