Three UK Reveals Data Showing the Nation’s Changing Phone Habits
Mobile network operator Three UK has today celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first ever truly portable mobile phone call (i.e. not tied to a Carphone), which was made by Motorola executive Martin Cooper, by revealing some interesting data that shows how our phone habits have changed.
Three’s data reveals that customers now call each other 25% more than they did 10 years ago. In a survey commissioned by the mobile network, four in five people said they make or receive phone calls at least once a week.
However, the data also shows a growing generational divide, as young people have admitted to being apprehensive about making phone calls.
➤ Over half (58%) of Gen Zs say they are nervous making calls to people they don’t know, compared to just over a third (34%) of over 55s
➤ Nearly half (47%) of 16-24 year-olds let phone calls go to voicemail or reject them because they prefer to text, compared with just a fifth (18%) of over 55s
➤ Two in five (40%) young people, nearly four times more than over 55s (11%), ask others to make calls for them to avoid doing it
Displacing traditional phone calls are new forms of communicating which are most widely adopted by the young generations. These include:
➤ Video calls, with 60% of 16-24-year-olds saying they use video calls to connect with friends and family at least once a week, twice as many as those aged 55+ (29%)
➤ Voice notes which have become popular with 58% of 16-24-year-olds using them at least once a week, compared with only 12% of those aged 55+
➤ Group chats, with 73% of Gen Z saying they are in one or more that’s active every single day, compared with 41% among the 55+ group
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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I’m in the Gen X group, the only voice / video calls I willingly regularly make are to my elderly parents as texting them is uncomfortably somewhere between hilarious and painful, also to a sibling who lives abroad and due to the time difference and their commitments, there are only limited periods of time where we can regularly converse uninterrupted.
Other than that I try to avoid voice calls. Like youngsters I find them inconvenient, if not demanding, preferring to text for remote social communications with my devices set to silent, allowing me to read and respond at my convivence.
Bar the odd rare exception, none of the above are done via traditional voice calls or SMS services, rather their modern app and ecosystem sucessors.
When it comes non social communications, generally it’s via email or live chat, only using traditional voice calls when it’s a more urgent issues, and for the new normal of telehealth appointments where I am called within a predefined time window.
I wonder whether the 55+ group were phone-shy at younger ages? Admittedly it would have mostly involved landlines and expensive metered call rates, so context was different but I’m just wondering if this is simply something about youth, or whether it’s the youth of today.
As an Officially Certified Old Buzzard it’s so long ago that I can’t really remember if I was phone shy in my youth. Now where did I put those Werthers?
Hard to say Andrew, I’m old enough to remember the GPO, their hardwired and corded rotary phones, ridiculously expensive call rates, being being presented with phone bills and being told off. However I’m also young enough to have benefited from the beginning of far cheaper calls in tail end of my teens for it not to be so much of a worry… until I had to start directly paying for them myself!
I’ve never really felt telephone anxiety, with the exception of a time long ago, when I had a rather depressing job, which involved having to telephone people to gather their often embarrassing and/or upsetting personal data, though that quickly passed once I got used to it.
From a personal perspective, I more often than not find voice calls an annoyance and an imposition, rather than anything else.
@Andrew
I hated using the home phone in the corridor to speak to my mates and especially to girls when I knew my mum was listening.
Phoning a girl for the first time, her dad answers and your mum is listening, put me right off, couldn’t wait to get my own phone.
My brother had one of those philips phones with a corded handset attached to the battery and antenna.
Come uni I had a cheap Amsterdam from carphone warehouse, soon swapped for a Nokia 2010, then an ericsoon mars bar etc.
Amsterdam = Amstrad
Older people might not realise it costs the same to ring the other end of the country than a local call. Certainly i have got a call from my brother and was told to hurry up and answer it as it was ‘long distance’. The call was just a normal call from another part of the UK. Older people may not be aware of modern technology, and costs involved.
Did he call you after 6 to get the cheap rate?
Hmmm. It’s been decades since calls cost more for “long distance”. I think the vast majority of older people probably would not make that mistake. Speaking anecdotally, the older people in my own family (in their 70s and 80s) know now it works now.
I blame less calling partially due to the huge increase in scam calls. I will be first to admit I ignore so many calls from numbers I don’t know as there is a high chance it’s a scam call.
Yup. If the call is important, they’ll leave a message. If they call multiple times but don’t leave a message,then I simply block the number.
My phone is always on silent too. Oh, and my voicemail greeting message is kept as the standard, default one.
I don’t say my name on my voicemail, if you know me you’ll recognise my voice, if I call back you may recognise my voice, if it’s a scam they don’t get to confirm my name.
Does the report calculate time spent on personal inter-communications versus time spent online?
There is not much point in Government encouraging all these altnets to invest unless they have a path to integrating mobile devices into their propositions.
Too scared to make/answer a phone call but not shy about whipping out their todgers and broadcasting them to random strangers, how quare.