Picture this: it’s the 1990s, you’ve just got home from school, and your parents are still at work.
You might be under the entrusted care of an older sibling – or even flying solo – but you realise you need to get in contact with them about something.
They’ll be home in a few hours, but is it safe to eat a specific snack from the cupboard? Are you allowed to have a friend over to watch TV?
So, what do you do? You might not have a mobile phone yet – and even if you did, your parents are at work, right? They might not pick up.
And so, you grab the house phone and call their office – a nostalgic classic that, in an increasingly technological world in which everyone has smartphones and is constantly contactable, is dying out among younger generations.
‘Gen Z will never get this, but for Millennials, this is a deep cut,’ comedian Tanya Hennessy joked in a recent TikTok video.
‘Why did we call our parents on the phone at their workplace – like we would literally just interrupt their workday – to ask them really dumb questions.
‘Sometimes you’d have to talk to a receptionist before you got to your actual parent, and then you get on the phone to your parent and go, “oh, can Sarah come over?” “Can I have a paddle pop?”
‘And your mum’s like fully at work. Sometimes you’d call them multiple times, talk to the receptionist multiple times, and the questions were so dumb because we didn’t have texts and it was weird to send a fax.
‘I remember calling my mum at her place of work once to ask if I could have frozen peas.’
Naturally, her followers took to the comments section to share the silliest things they used to call their parents at work over.
‘Once I called my mum out of a meeting to tell her I was first in Mario Kart,’ @dimi.gianni shared, while @laurengibson.art noted that her mum, who was a theatre nurse, was often ‘taken out of surgery’ to come to the phone.
‘I drew little stick figure comics and sent it through the fax,’ @staceylorrainec added, as @lanaa68 joked that she used to call her mum ‘to tell my brother to stop annoying me.’
This isn’t the only technology-related divide between Millennials and Gen Zs, who, amidst changing parenting styles, might not have been left alone at all when they were little. Or, if they were, they might’ve had access to a mobile phone instead.
Now, as adults, Gen Zs are finding ways to block out the constant noise that smartphones bring – and many are permanently using their ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode to reduce the overwhelm.
This simple mobile phone setting has come in handy for managing for those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and 2010, shutting off all notifications from calls, texts, social media likes, emails and group chat updates.
Likewise, a recent Uswitch poll found that a quarter of people aged between 18 and 34 have never answered their phone. Instead, they simply ignore it when it rings and opt to text a friend or , rather than calling them back.
Almost 70% of those surveyed said they instead of speaking on the phone, while 48% like to communicate via and 37% prefer using voice notes.
How things have changed from the glory days of calling our mum’s office, hey?
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