We can text, whatsapp, Facebook message and snapchat — but are we losing the luxury (奢侈) of the phone conversation? Who has time to chat when you can spend hours on WhatsApp?

Most of my phone calls are less than a minute long. If I accidentally hit answer instead of pressing the ignore button, it’s usually to say, “Hold on, I’ll call you back” before quickly typing out a “whatsup?” text. My list of recent phone calls is limited to four people and unless we live together, are related, or dating, there is very little chance of joining that list.

But as the original mobile brand, Nokia, finally dies, it seems I’m not the only who’s abandoning the phone call. The average adult spends more time on media or communication per day (8 hours and 41 minutes) than on sleeping (8 hours and 21 minutes) but among all that communication, the phone call is the one medium that’s falling.

So why has the phone call fallen out of favor? The many messaging apps and emails seem to have created a gradient (坡度) of communication, so that the phone call is no longer the standard way of conversing long distance, but a relatively intimate (亲密的) thing.

Rachel, 24, says that she used to speak to all her girlfriends on the phone but now only calls a few. “I rarely even speak to good friends on the phone and if they call me, I’m like, ‘Hello, is something wrong?’,” says Rachel. “If I do a phone call, it feels really official, like it’s a big deal.”

Instead of taking the time to ring a friend and catch up, it now seems easier to send a brief message. And unless you’re extremely close to someone, an unscheduled phone call can feel like an intrusion (干扰). Whereas (但是) text messages can be put to one side for hours or even days, a phone call demands attention in the moment.

But while text messages and emails may be a more efficient way of sharing basic facts and information, they’re not necessarily the best way of communication. We may be communicating more than ever before, but we seem to be listening far less.