#TELEPHOBIA: WHY GEN Z FINDS PHONE CALLS STRESSFUL

As May marks Mental Health Awareness Month, it's crucial to align support with shifting digital communication habits

- Navya Sharma

When 21-year-old Shweta Kaushik from Chandigarh sees her phone light up with a call, she freezes. "Even if it's just the dentist, I wait for it to stop and then text them," she says, adding, "I feel unprepared." Like Shweta, many young adults feel a deep discomfort when it comes to making calls. This unease is known as 'telephobia'—a fear of phone calls—and is common among tech-savvy Gen Z, born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s.

Talk around this phenomenon went viral after content creator Uptin Saidii (235k followers) in an interview with CNBC claimed that nearly 75% of Gen Z avoid phone calls. The reel, now at over 2 million views, struck a chord—comments flooded in with users agreeing, calling phone calls intrusive and even panic-inducing.