It’s been five or six years since I stopped answering my phone. With the exception of family or work calls, most of which I’m expecting, everyone now goes straight to voicemail, where my iPhone software dutifully transcribes the messages, which are almost always robocalls or spam. And my text messages are even more of a mess than my unanswered calls.

Apple has promised to help with a couple of new features in iOS 26. You might not have noticed, even if you’ve updated your iPhone, because the most ambitious feature, which uses AI to screen calls, is off by default. (You’ll be prompted to turn it on when you first open the Phone app after updating to iOS 26, or you can turn it on in your Phone app settings by selecting “Ask Reason for Calling.”) Another new feature that filters out spam texts is on by default, but it’s a little bit confusing to figure out how it works. I am nevertheless down to try anything.

Some 80 percent of Americans are like me and don’t answer calls from unknown numbers. That’s according to a 2020 Pew Survey, and I’d guess the percentage is higher today, especially after the scam-bonanza that the pandemic launched. Meanwhile, text spam is definitely increasing, at least according to an ongoing tally from Robokiller, which makes spam-blocking software. This past August alone, Americans received a head-spinning 19.2 billion spam texts, which amounts to 63 spam texts per person that month. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that Americans lose $470 billion a year to text-based scams.

Who’s to blame for this mess? The state of accountability looks like that Spider-Man meme, except everyone is pointing at the scammers and spammers. But really, carriers, regulators, and tech companies are all to blame, and the problem is getting worse.

“This should be a collective, societal solution, because this is such a horrible problem in this country, and it has been for years and years and years,” Teresa Murray, a consumer watchdog at the US PIRG Education Fund, told me. “Most people that I know, old people, young people, middle-aged people, professionals, students, no matter what they do, everybody that I talk to has a certain amount of skepticism answering their phone, and that’s unfortunate.”

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