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The shift is real: Landline use is down 78 percent, and Americans now send an average of 58 texts a day.

Anxiety drives texting: Texting feels safer because you can compose and edit before anyone sees it.

Loneliness and anxiety diverge: Anxious people prefer texts; lonely people prefer calls.

Escape texting has costs: Using texts to avoid boredom links to addiction and weakens face-to-face skills.

When smartphones first became ubiquitous, many of us assumed they would mean more talking. More calls on the bus, more conversations on the street, more voices in the air (see my previous post on this topic). What actually happened was almost the opposite.

Talking on the phone has quietly become passé. Landline usage has declined 78 percent in the U.S. since 2000, replaced by smartphones, and the average American adult now sends 58 text messages a day (Laurent, 2026). Even mobile voice calls have plateaued. A 2026 YouGov survey of more than 2,400 Americans found that text messaging is the only communication channel showing meaningful growth, with 29 percent of respondents saying they were texting more than a year ago, compared to just 16 percent saying the same of voice calls........

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