A lot of people, particularly at this self-improvement stage of the year, spend a great deal of time worrying about what makes them look old. Is it the bags under the eyes or the invisible triceps? This is daft, since, if you have a ring light or – better yet – are willing to pretend that your camera isn’t working, no one needs to know what you really look like unless they live with you (and those people have a fair idea already). The giveaway now is how you use your phone. You can absolutely carbon-date yourself in a single exchange.
If you leave voicemail, that makes you a boomer, according to assorted experts. If you send a voice note, you are (spiritually, at least) a millennial, or even generation Z. This makes no sense, since, to your interlocutor, these are two identical experiences: an annoying taped message that they are burdened with listening to. However, if you query the rules, that puts you back in boomer territory.
If you trail off a text with “…”, this situates you right in the middle of generation X, but if you ask a younger acquaintance what is so wrong with ellipsis, you doubly age yourself, first by using ellipsis and second by knowing what it is called.
Between two people over 40, switching from a text to a phone call in the middle of an exchange is a little infra dig, but not drastic. You might just be at a loose end. In the 30 to 40 bracket, to call anyone at all without scheduling it first is considered incredibly impertinent. To the under-30s, this counts as de-escalation – don’t intensify the tone, change the platform.
Boomers answer their phone the minute it rings, like it is a smoke alarm. They could be in the middle of getting knighted, or being diagnosed with a terminal illness, and they would still go: “Ooh, unknown caller ID – could be important.” There is a generation above, sometimes called the “silent generation”, where they keep their phone in a drawer, forget it is there and might call you back a month later. This used to really bug me, but now I find it ineffably charming and nostalgic, like vinyl.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
