I'm currently getting a visa, if someone involved in the decision making process calls my number I better answer it.

I was interviewing for a job not that long ago, when people get back to me by the phone I better answer it.

When my dentist or doctor calls to schedule an appointment I need to answer it.

If a family member needs to get my attention a phone call works better than text - the ringtone is more noticeable.

Of course I live in Canada and my number isn't scattered everywhere on the web, I don't think I even get a robocall a week on average. But even if I lived in the states, I don't see how I could avoid the first two requiring I answer my phone sometimes, possibly the third as well but at least I'm the client there so I might be able to talk them into an alternative means of contacting me.

Semo-related but it's infuriating how many companies refuse to contact you by email. I'm currently remortgaging a flat, and I've told the broker repeatedly to contact me by email, and they still phone, leave a voicemail asking to be called back, and send an email saying they called.

Um.... they have to let you know that you need an appointment. "Your lab tests came back and we'd like to make a follow-up appointment."

My mortgage broker didn't mind emails.

So you're expecting a call from them in this case?

I'm starting to believe they don't want certain things in black and white so they would rather call you. It could just be policy though, who's to say.

I do still find it irritating that they insist. I'm much more likely to respond to an email quickly than to a phone call and I only answer phone calls from my family while I'm at work.

All of that said, yes, pollsters do have to do more work to survey younger people. They have recently added cell phones to their call lists, since land line phones are going the way of the dodo.

Second, the tables that show responses for all respondents do include values (not N/A) for all age groups, meaning that across the n=1000 poll there are > 125 respondents in each age group, meaning that at minimum 250 people out of the 1000 in the poll are under 50.

The categories that do have N/A are in questions that select for only Democratic or Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote -- which is only 411 respondents out of the poll. And that one does have a lot of N/A's, including in the < 45 column. Having N < 125 under 45 in a sample size of 411 people is disappointing, but hardly the same as "no responses from people under 50", which is what you wrote. It also doesn't mean that those responses weren't included in the poll, only that they didn't feel confident to break them out separately.

In New Zealand, I have had periods where spam phone calls have been pretty bad for me. 2 or 3 a day for a week or so, and that was annoying.

But they always seem to stop.

The last spam call I got was long enough ago that it doesn't show up in my iphones call history. Certainly several months ago.

Can't the phone companies look at calls the same way email providers do and use all the information they have at their disposal to filter out the spam?

Most people just use hiya and all of the apps that community source the blocking. Tbh my experience is probably better with those.

It's the same BS with credit scores/credit freeze

If you wonder about a poll's integrity you can read about their methods, e.g. Pew research,

https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/u-s-survey-research/our-...

"Do you have a minute to talk about your phone service, we're calling from your provider."

OR

"We're finding out for the government about voter preferences."

That sort of thing. People thing they may have an obligation to the company.

UK government do a paper-based survey of businesses for which there is a legal obligation (backed by a fine) to respond, but it appears when you first get it just like one of these scammy polling companies.

>When the German electronic band Kraftwerk were in the studio, they refused to be disturbed. Working for hours on end, patiently perfecting their sonic arrangements, required zero interruptions. So much so that they even took the ringer out of the only telephone in the studio. So what happened when someone wanted to call them? Simple. If someone wanted to speak to them when they were working in the studio, the band would instruct that person to call at a precise time - not 2 minutes before and not a couple of minutes after, but exactly at that time. Then, at that precise time, a member of the band would stop what they were doing, walk across the studio, pick up the none ringing phone and say ‘Hello’ and the call would begin. That’s the only way you could get to speak to them. You made an agreement. You said what you were going to do and then you did it.

http://www.youneedstandout.com/blog/2014/10/20/how-to-call-k...

So really I don't see the point.

One known and pre-timed distraction is a lot less distracting than many unknown randomly-timed distractions.

Telephones are useful for a lot of things, but they are not quite as critical as you think.

The Kraftwerk description sounds a bit eccentric to me. Their business model is about being eccentric, so no surprise there.

I think this might be easier if you are working as a group and have a big clock on the wall. I am a rubbish instrumentalist, but do hang around with a hell of a lot of musicians, and 'how long was that' does seem to be one of the most commonly asked questions of each other when they are in a studio. Also, if paying for a studio, they generally become very good at estimating the current time.

Calls I make are split ~50/50 between personal, to people who know me and have my number, and business, when I either want to buy something or resolve some issue. Calls I receive are split 40/60 between personal and spam. And I'm in Europe. In the US, from what I hear, that would be closer to 10/90.

There's a huge asymmetry in phone use. Marketers and scammers make the phone network near-unusable to regular people, by ensuring most of the calls they receive are unwanted.

I'm in Germany and I'd say I get one call a month from somebody who wants to do a survey or something like that.

And I also might get one spam SMS per month which I report to the "Bundesnetzagentur", which will then take care of that as this is prohibited in Germany.

I regularly get a survey call and "congratulations, you won a vacuum cleaner/spa/whatever" call roughly once a month. From time to time, I get some company I'm technically in business with call me (through an outsourced call centre), trying to upsell something useless. I used to get a lot more of calls like these a couple years ago, but I vaguely recall something in the legislation having changed since then, and most spam calls disappeared.

That said, a year ago I started my own business, and now the cold calling just doesn't stop. In Poland AFAIK it's illegal to spam individuals, but it's legal to spam businesses - and now I have, for example, Polcard (card processor) representatives calling me roughly once a month, asking if maybe I'd like a POS terminal. I keep saying them, I'm a contractor, I only do B2B and don't need a terminal - they note this down, and call again the next month.

So currently it all adds up to ~10 +/- 5 unwanted calls a month. It's still usually more than personal calls I receive (but less than personal or business calls I make). Rise of the mobile-connected IMs pretty much put a stop to most personal phone calls among the people I know.

Still happens despite of regulations and it wouldn't be that bad if you just could get the info from person calling you, who got your number and demand removal from database but as you probably know, they love to hang up the second they hear this question. I've heard that the newest trick is to give the victim the premium service number saying "that's how you can get your phone number removed".

Personally, I'm still dealing with periods during year when all 3 phones in my house from Orange are receiving calls from same spam number - two mobile contracts and one landline. I explicitly demanded which was check-marked on my subscriber's account that I do not wish receiving spam calls even if that means my bill is cut by 5 PLN and I'm missing chance to win something (sic!); so it seems even service provider doesn't bother with legislation here.

> they note this down, and call again the next month.

It's probably due to rotation of people - one shift comes in and then next one and nobody cares what called person has to say. It's still a potential "client" for them and the mindset here is "maybe after n-th time they'll gave up and purchase our stuff", I believe

There actually was a change in Polish legislation - Telecommunications Act 172.1 (Ustawa Prawo Telekomunikacyjne art. 172 par. 1)

Occasionally I use it for a general network connection when I don't have wifi.

I call my parents every once in a while, though. It's a nice to have feature.

- to get directions

- to send and receive text messages

- to listen to music and media

- voicemail

and lastly

- to make and receive phone calls agreed upon in advance, usually text

I could probably dump my phone number except for WhatsApp. That's basically replaced my phone for all friends and family. I haven't turned on my ringer in months.

I had call after call after call from this one number, over about 3 weeks. Eventually, after I was complaining about it to my wife the phone went and it was the same number so I picked up ... it was a domain registrar asking "are you happy, do you need any help", that was it, just a lousy marketing call (probably because I basketed a domain with them and then bought it elsewhere).

What an absolute waste of time.

My phone is in Do Not Disturb mode 100% of the time, with only alarms and priority calls whitelisted, so I know that if a call comes through, it's probably important.

Everyone else can send a message or record a voicemail. I'll call or write back when I feel like it. I have also taken the step of disabling all notifications except for direct messages to me. Those get to pop an icon in the notification bar, but no sound nor vibration alerts. I'll see the message whenever I decide to check my phone.

Ive contemplated changing my number. But I imagine that won’t actually help. Is this just the new reality? Are there any solutions?

I've literally noticed this just in the last couple of weeks; at least for me, it's a relatively recent development. YMMV.

[1]: https://xkcd.com/1129/

Are you referring to this? [0] I was googling because I was interested. Looking at this the data seems fishy. Under total respondents they have answers for the age group, but not under any of the democratic/democratic leaning responses. So it looks like they only interviewed republicans under 50 and both groups 50+. There's some more fishy patterns like that with repubs <$50k.

So it is hard to say if only young republicans answer their phones or the data set is (purposefully?) biased.

[0] http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/03/19/rel4b.-.2020.pdf

For the poll questions that specifically say. “For voters registered as Democrats or democrat-leaning independents”, the response Pool is cut down to something like 450 (the exact number is listed in the description). If they then divide that into four age groups, then it would actually be reasonable for NONE of them to exceed 125 respondents.

If you look at other breakdowns in the survey, it is clear that all of the age groups and demographics are covered.

Also note that polls results are almost always corrected after the fact for sampling error - so if they get a low response rate from 20-30 year olds, then they weight those responses more heavily so that they represent the expected proportion of the overall population.

Most of the spam calls are from energy companies selling energy to small businesses, because I'm registered as a business. Maybe I should get a separate phone number that goes straight to voicemail for my CoC registration.

But other than that, our do-not-call regulation seems to be working quite well. Maybe the US should copy it.

I'm in my late 30s, have a cell phone only, which is on the do not call registry. The only times I get harassed are when I update my resume on whatever job site. Then for a few weeks/months I get what I consider too many calls from recruiters.

I wonder if we have different purchase histories or something that has resulted in this very different outcome.

I use to not travel much, and any traveling I did was pretty basic flight + hotel. No fancy vacations or anything. A bit over a year ago I booked a trip to a resort in Cancun through a travel agency in Florida. None stop spam since. I noticed a massive increase the amount of email spam I got and started to received a large number of phone calls.

I can't say for certain that was the cause as it seems spam phone calls have been heavily increasing over the last few years, but it's the only thing I can point to as an out of the ordinary change.

It seems plausible to me that some people would have learned similar correlations between chat notifications vs ringtones.

First things first: Everyone hears your end of the conversation with a voice call. I absolutely hate that: My family would pick up pieces (by accident or not) and when my ex's mental illness was worse, he would listen. Period.

But there are also other things: I can flush the toilet. I don't have to do as many "formalities" and I don't have to stop everything I'm doing to have a conversation with someone.

I figure communication goes on a sliding scale of intrusiveness. Video is the most intrusive (I don't know why old sci-fi wanted this!)... and text the least.

I personally just prefer phone calls for any proper conversations, the odd "hello, how are you doing?" type messages are fine with text but if I actually want to talk to someone, phone calls every time.

People who prefer to create drama or interminable conversations can and do do so via any medium.

A reasonable theory would be that if your typing skills are good enough, the opposite is true.

Example, today on the train I texted a mate to see if he was about as we'd previously discussed meeting up today. I was going to get off the train at a particular stop if I was going to see him but otherwise would have carried on. I texted him and didn't get a reply until just before I was going to get off the train, which was about 40 minutes later. If I'd just given him a phone call, I'd have known immediately. It was all fine in the end but if I hadn't received his text before the first stop, I'd have continued on my way assuming he was busy. But because now the default method of communication is text messaging, I feel I can't make a phone call any more.

Voice calls are useful for things that need to be dealt with quickly but otherwise async communication is much more pleasant.

A voice call means they need my attention RIGHT NOW. (This is fine if it's during declared "office hours"). If the call is from someone I know, then it's likely they could have also messaged me or emailed me.

But if the call is from someone I don't know, it's either a scam or they're trying to sell me something. Some situation where they are more prepared than I am. But even then, text can be unambiguous in detail where I might fail to hear something in the call. And with text, I can generally take my time to reply when I choose to, can take the time to consider what to reply, etc. For better or worse, text omits a lot of "body language" aspects too.

Encouraging non-PSTN calls can have huge privacy implications (e.g. using Facebook for health care provider communications).

But ya; personally, I have a dedicated voicemail number that I hand out when I “must” provide a phone number.

I am very interested in a cheap voip service that is literally just voicemail. I'd love that. Especially if it's only $1-2/mo.

I answer the phone all the time and it's always someone I know. I do not have a caller id display.

Here's how I managed that.

Only 4 people know my real phone number and are under orders not to add it to any digital address book.

My phone number is registered to an alias. I pay for my phone using cash.

My area code is in a city I've never lived in and have no connection to.

I add my number to the do not call list.

For generic phone number requests, such as stores and shipper that demand it, it's always 555-1212.

Of course this method won't work well for people who need to give their phone number out to people they don't know. But then again if that result is simply not to answer the phone ever, why would that be better. And for those who really only ever want to hear from a half dozen or fewer trusted friends and family, this is a solution that works.

My main actual trick has been to be discerning in the things I sign up for and never filling in information that's not required.

Think you might want to save on paper and give out your email address when you register to vote? Dear god. San Francisco doesn't give voters the ability to only receive correspondence from the Department of Elections. The spam is insane. Obviously you get all sorts crackpots running for office that'll spam you endlessly. For a while I was even getting email about pet clothing from some guy. Turns out he ran a failed mayoral campaign and then turned around and used the voter rolls to promote his business (because clearly I want a tutu for my non-existent dog).

And, sure, you can remove your email address from the voter rolls but not your physical address (so that spam will continue unmitigated). San Francisco is an extra level of special here as it doesn't even bother with HTTPS for their Department of Elections stuff.

In...olden times when people ordered by talking to other people, you’d often pay cash. Some places would take credit cards, usually by reading the number out loud. One fancy place let you type the numbers in with the touch pad.

Card payments, contactless payments, Apple Pay, metro/travel cards and banks/financial institutions with fancy mobile apps have meant that I rarely if ever need cash.

I wouldn't go as far as to have no phone number whatsoever, but living without one doesn't seem entirely crazy to me.

Having a WiFi-only device (as opposed to a data-only one) did mean I had to plan things a bit, just like I had to do before mobile phones became such a popular thing. It wasn’t a big deal at all.

I guess I’m convinced that it could be done, but I’m less convinced that it makes sense, and baffled as to why you’d pay for a phone and then go to such lengths to avoid using it.

I always find it interesting how these almost cease each weekend day. Do scammers' charge more to answer a phone on a weekend?