I can’t believe what I am about to type out…

Colleges and Universities are offering classes to help Gen Z with Telephobia… The fear/anxiety of talking on the phone…

I’m not joking… It’s real…

I’ll be completely honest with you. I have (at times) crippling anxiety. Particularly in crowds.

But talking on the phone… Come on Gen Z…

I’m going to put my 36 year old hat on and say this…

Gen Z loves to give us millennials hell for what we wear, the words we use, the music we still listen too…

But they can’t simply talk on the phone!? 

Here is a quote from a article from CNBC…“They associate the ringing phone with fear,” she said. “I don’t know who’s on the end of it. I don’t know how to deal with it.”

I’m not sure about your iPhone, but mine has caller ID. I can tell who is calling me. If I don’t know who it is…I send that bad boy to voicemail and 9/10 times it was a spam call asking about my trucks extended warranty.

In this class at these colleges and universities, they practice making phone calls…

  “The session involves practicing a series of scenarios where you have to make a phone call, for example, calling the doctors to make an appointment, calling in sick to work, and other everyday scenarios. The pupils are expected to sit back to back to mimic a regular phone call where they can’t see the person on the other end and practice by using scripts.”

Calling the doctor…Calling in sick…

I can only imagine what they “other everyday scenarios” could be…

I don’t like calling the dentist. Not because I am scared of making the call. I just don’t like going to the dentist. I still make the call (because my wife makes me).

I don’t like calling in sick to work. Not because I am scared that I am going to get fired. I just don’t like missing work (its called work-ethic). I still call in sick when I have to. Because I am not a savage and don’t want to give my co-workers whatever the cesspool daycare gave my kids that I have now contracted.

The main cause of this “telephobia” is being blamed on Covid 19…“If they’ve missed out two years’ worth of social interaction and ebb and flow, then that obviously plays into how they’re feeling about being in social situations [and] in larger contexts, especially when they’re feeling uncomfortable.”

The Covid 19 era sucked. The world shut down. I get it…

But the boogie man is not on the other end of the phone, mouth breathing and waiting to hear you speak words.

Eventually you have to grow a set of cajones! 

With all of that being said… If this class was offered when I was in college, I would have taken it and it would have been the easiest A that I would have ever achieved.

-Matt Webb