I don’t like talking on the phone. I could count on one hand the number of calls I made this week, or maybe even the number of minutes I’ve used. For as difficult as it is for me to make calls, I actually dialed out the other day for some information and someone had the nerve to ask me to meet in person. I was taken aback. I stammered something about email.
He must be a baby boomer, rather than a Gen Y like me. We millennials don’t like to use the phone as a phone. When my phone rings, I’m so caught off guard I hardly know what to do with it. And it’s usually my mom calling.
“Young people say they avoid voice calls because the immediacy of a phone call strips them of the control that they have over the arguably less-intimate pleasures of texting, e-mailing, Facebooking or tweeting. They even complain that phone calls are by their nature impolite, more of an interruption than the blip of an arriving text. [They] rarely just call someone, for fear of being seen as rude or intrusive. First, they text to make an appointment to talk.” — The Washington Post, Texting generation doesn’t share boomers’ taste for talk
This puts mobile marketing in a prime position. Those young people, the same ones who don’t want to pick up the phone even for their parents, are reading mobile mail more than email. We check a text message within 4 minutes of receiving it. We are a generation who is ready to make the only phone calls we DO make from within our web browser.
Are you one of ‘us’? Take this quiz (borrowed from Penelope Trunk’s ‘Brazen Careerist’) to find out which generation you’re part of:
Do you have your own web page? (1 point)
Have you made a web page for someone else? (2 points)
Do you IM your friends? (1 point)
Do you text your friends? (2 points)
Do you watch videos on YouTube? (1 point)
Do you remix video files from the Internet? (2 points)
Have you paid for and downloaded music from the Internet? (1 point)
Do you know where to download free (illegal) music from the Internet? (2 points)
Do you blog for professional reasons? (1 point)
Do you blog as a way to keep an online diary? (2 points)
Have you visited MySpace at least five times? (1 point)
Do you communicate with friends on Facebook? (2 points)
Do you use email to communicate with your parents? (1 point)
Did you text to communicate with your parents? (2 points)
Do you take photos with your phone? (1 point)
Do you share your photos from your phone with your friends? (2 points)
0-1 point – Baby Boomer
2-6 points – Generation Jones
6- 12 points – Generation X
12 or over – Generation Y
With 20 points, I’d say I’m strongly in with Generation Y. But that’s nothing to phone home about.
What about you? Which generation are you, and how do your phone habits match up with it?
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Anne is a Project Manager at Roll Mobile. She is a fitness fanatic and Twitter addict who is candid, random, and will give you the benefit of the doubt. Suggestions for a BLOG@ROLL topic can be sent to anne@whyroll.com or on Twitter via @RollMobile.