>there's a whole contingent of people out there who still pick up the phone when their friends call

That's increasingly rare. My elderly dad still uses voice calling pretty much exclusively and a friend who I'll exchange voice calls with. But I don't think there's a single other person who would call me out of the blue socially absent an emergency--and at least some of these are people I would have regularly called 25 years or so ago.

For that matter, no one at work would just call me on the phone either.

Seems the correct etiquette these days is to arrange a call days in advance at a time that will be mutually convenient. My younger self would never have believed this would be the case yet here we are?

The prevalence of messaging probably has a lot to do with it. "We still on for tomorrow night?" works fine as just a text. "Have time to chat on phone later?" seems to work pretty well too.

In any case, the goalposts for calling someone out of the blue have moved for a lot of people.

It used to be the only time you could make a call when someone was at work or at home.

Now you can call them literally 24/7 no matter where they are in the world. There is no recluse.

Interrupting people in the middle of what they're doing whenever, wherever is quite rude and fixing that etiquette is a GOOD thing.

>> be me

>> 30, elderly