More from the article...

... A recent survey found a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never answer the phone - respondents say they ignore the ringing, respond via text or search the number online if they don't recognise it.

The Uswitch survey of 2,000 people also found that nearly 70% of 18-34s prefer a text to a phone call.

For older generations, talking on the phone is normal - my parents spent their teenage years fighting with their siblings over the landline in the corridor only to then have their entire family listen in to their conversations.

I used the landline for business calls only in the late nineties

In contrast, my teenage years were spent texting.

From the moment I received my pink flip Nokia on my 13th birthday, I was obsessed with texting.

I would spend every evening after school formulating 160-character texts to my friends, removing every unnecessary space and vowel until the message resembled jumbled up consonants even GCHQ[1] would struggle to decipher. ...