Only boomers use voicemail

How you use your phone is a dead giveaway for your age, says Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Leaving a voicemail makes you a boomer, but if you send a voice note, “you are (spiritually, at least) a millennial, or even generation Z”. This makes no sense, of course, because to your interlocutor “these are two identical experiences: an annoying taped message that they are burdened with listening to”.

Between two people over 40, switching from a text to a phone call mid-conservation is a little off-putting, but not drastic. “You might just be at a loose end.” To the under-30s, it’s generally an act of de-escalation when texts get too heated – “don’t intensify the tone, change the platform”. But in the 30-to-40 bracket, you’d be mad to call anyone at all without scheduling it first. Oh, and don’t forget the “silent generation” – the parents of the boomers. “They keep their phone in a drawer, forget it is there and might call you back a month later.”