Science- Picking up phone calls is a cringe boomer trait that tickles millennials and zoomers.
- But US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told me picking up calls is the one thing he recommends we all do.
On the few occasions I've called my (millennial) boyfriend out of the blue, he's answered with trepidation. "H.. he… hey? Are you OK?"
The assumption is that it's an emergency. Millennials, zoomers, and whoever's next… we don't just call. We text then call. Or we just text. I usually voice-note.
When I see a call from a non-relative flash on my phone, I might pick up, but I often don't. I'm working, or making food between meetings, or lost in a social media rabbit hole that I'm simply not ready to extract myself from. Sometimes I'm sitting smooth-brained, unprepared for an unexpected social interaction. If it's a friend calling, I assume it's not an emergency because there's surely a lot of people they would call before deciding I'm, in fact, their savior. I'll text to ask what's up.
Picking up a call is a boomer trait. "Someone alert the boomers that they don't have to pick up the phone every time we call," Jared Freid, aka @wizardofha, said in a recent TikTok that accrued 500,000 views in a couple of days. The comments filled up with people remembering times their parents picked up the phone, only to say they can't talk right now: "Like ok don't pick up then!"
It's inefficient, it's pointless, and as a result, the implication is that answering a call is somehow cringe. And one thing millennials and zoomers don't want to be is cringe.
I was forced to reckon with this deeply ingrained perspective when I interviewed Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, who had a pretty persuasive, science-backed argument for embracing this boomer habit.
Murthy is spearheading a global effort to reduce loneliness and foster social connection. He has spent years researching the tangible, detrimental impacts of loneliness on our brains and bodies. For humans, meaningful social interaction is just as important to us as food and water. Without it, our nervous systems act like we're in distress, affecting our immune systems, sleep schedules, heart health, and mental health.
Murthy was candid about his own struggles with loneliness, something that he says is inescapable in 2023. "Sometimes I have to push myself a little bit more to go and engage socially because I had gotten used to just largely being virtual during that first year of the pandemic. That's a very normal and natural thing, but it's important that we do nudge ourselves forward," he said.
I asked him if he has started doing anything to foster human connection in his life — perhaps something he has learned through his research, or from the 27 celebrities he has interviewed on his podcast, House Calls, from Matthew McConaughey to Yo-Yo Ma.
Yes, he said: Answering every phone call.
"Number one, I've heard that just picking up the phone when friends call, even if it's just to tell them for five seconds that, "Hey, I'm tied up. Can I call you back later?", that that actually makes a big difference compared to silencing the call and texting them back," Murthy said. "The reason is because you're hearing the sound of their voice, they're hearing your voice, and that connection is stronger even if it's brief."
It's true. Over a decade of research shows hearing familiar voices has a strong, tangible impact on health, even speeding up recovery for comatose patients, per an often-cited study by Northwestern Medicine research professor Theresa Pape. In a separate recent (though small) study at the University of Texas, Austin, researchers found friends developed stronger bonds through phone calls than texts.
The key to connection is simplicity, Murthy explained. "It's about the fact that small steps make a big difference in how connected we feel. This is important because sometimes we feel like if we're really struggling with something like loneliness, we've got to overhaul our life entirely. But it turns out that small steps really help and so here's some of the steps that I've been hearing about and some of these I've started to adopt in my own life."
I'm still wired to reject a call; I get more calls from spam robodialers than long-lost chums. But I'm going to try to pick up more. Maybe this will be an unexpected antidote to winter sadness. I hope my friends — and perhaps the occasional salesperson — are ready to socially connect.