Voicemail: That's so last century

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Are voice mails obsolete? Does anyone even listen to them any more? With so many easier ways to communicate, leaving a voice mail may be like putting a message in a bottle. Someone might pick it up - eventually.

Ask any young person. Surekha Sydney, 27, estimated that she received one voice mail for every 10 or 15 text messages.

"The only people that leave me voice mails are strangers and my parents," she said.

University student Joe Cotsas said he tells everyone he knows not to leave him voice mails. If he didn't have to worry about employers calling, he said, he probably wouldn't have bothered to record a personal greeting. His classmate Justin Deckert concurred. "I think voice mails are actually kind of a hassle," he said.

The Pew internet and American Life Project reported last year that teens were texting five times more often per day than adults. And Nielsen said teens send an average of six texts every hour they're awake. Texting overall jumped 31 per cent in 2010, according to CTIA - The Wireless Association.

This may be why an informal survey of 57 people by The Inquirer found a clear generation gap when it comes to voice mail.

More than half the 35 respondents younger than 35 said they were in no rush to check their voice mail, listening to it only every few hours or days.

Seventy-six per cent of those younger than 35 said they favoured texts or emails, while those older than 55 said they preferred phone calls and voice mail.

"I hate checking voice mails," one young participant said. "Once I accidentally got fired because I missed a voice mail from my boss telling me to come in - got it a week later."

Checking voice mails often requires a separate phone call, which can be a deterrent. Why waste phone plan minutes if you can just return the missed call? iPhones solve the problem by archiving messages so that they can be played back with one touch, but many young people still don't see the point.

Verizon Wireless spokesman Bob Varettoni said his company does not disclose statistics regarding voicemail usage but noted that text usage had skyrocketed over the past few years, from 9.6 billion texts sent or received by Verizon Wireless customers in the US during the first quarter of 2006 to 180 billion texts sent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Parents text now, too, if only to keep in touch with their children.

Connie Keares, 49, said she had learned to text so she could reach her 17-year-old son Peter, who sat beside her smiling guiltily.

"If she leaves me a voice mail, sometimes I won't check it for another few days," he admitted.

Texting may be efficient but it doesn't account for nuance. Keares, for example, often is told her text messages come across as "really blunt" or "rude" because of their terseness.

Grace Garrity, Keares' niece, often fights with her long-distance boyfriend over the tone of his messages. "On text message and on Facebook chat, he comes across really, really cold, and, like, distant and kind of mean," she said, adding that "he doesn't use emoticons because he thinks they're stupid".

Once upon a time, facial expressions and voice inflections could convey congeniality but now people rely on smiley faces and exclamation marks. Consider how these two notes come across:

The meeting is at 2. Please be on time.

Or: The meeting is at 2. Please be on time :).

One seems imperious, the other good-natured.

Other tensions can arise. For instance, smartphone users send off rapid-fire emails and expect prompt responses in kind. But not everyone has a smartphone.

As tedious as it may seem to some, the safest approach is to ask people how they want to be reached.

Those who are still trying to figure out how to work their mobile phones find this all overwhelming.

"I just mailed four letters today, handwritten," said Mina Smith-Segal, 68, a Philadelphian artist. "The lady at the post office said young people don't even know how to address envelopes."

In a recent news report, US Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan said deliveries by the post office had declined by 43 billion pieces in the past five years.

As Barbara Pratt said: "Years ago, when you would see people walking around and talking to themselves, you would think they were crazy," she said. "Now, they're on the phone."

- AAP