The Art Of Texting Analysis

Jane Beard and Jeffrey Davis didn't realize how little they speak to their children by phone until they called AT&T to switch plans. The customer service agent was breathless. The Silver Spring couple had accumulated 28,700 unused minutes.

"None of the kids call us back! They will not call you back," said Beard, a former actress who with her husband coaches business leaders on public speaking.

A generation of e-mailing, followed by an explosion in texting, has pushed the telephone conversation into serious decline, creating new tensions between baby boomers and millennials -- those in their teens, 20s and early 30s.

Nearly all age groups are spending less time talking on the phone; boomers in their mid-50s and early 60s are the only
They even complain that phone calls are by their nature impolite, more of an interruption than the blip of an arriving
"One student told me that it takes her days to call her parents back and the parents thought she was intentionally putting them off," she said. "But the parents didn't get it. It's the medium. With e-mails, you're at the computer, writing a paper. With phone calls, it's a dedicated block of time."

Tannen, 65, worries that texting may fall victim one day to the same neglect that phone calls now face. Her generation's feelings, she said, are perfectly captured in a recent New Yorker magazine cartoon that shows two older, balding men sitting at a bar. The caption reads: "I used to call people, then I got into e-mailing, then texting, and now I just ignore everyone."

Ethan Seidel, rabbi of Tifereth Israel synagogue in the District, can't get many of his congregants younger than 35 on the telephone. Seidel, 52, often invites young, new members to his family's home for welcome dinners, but his gesture too often doesn't even merit return calls. "One member seemed only slightly apologetic for not returning the call," Seidel said. "I was floored by that. They say, 'I never answer the phone anymore.'