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texting, we now have apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and direct messaging on Twitter, which allow us to message for free. Throughout the world a growing number of people are using SMS for basic communications, and young people in particular have adopted texting at the expense of old-fashioned phone calls.
    That said, we haven’t given up our old habits altogether. Many people, including young adults, enjoy an occasional phone call and even think that it can signal something special in a budding relationship. But when we first started talking to people about how they ask one another out, we learned that with all these technological transitions, our feelings about when to use which medium have gotten pretty mixed up and confused. How do we figure out when to call, when to text, and when to just drop everything, stand outside someone’s window, and serenade them with your favorite nineties R&B tune, perhaps “All My Life” by K-Ci & JoJo?
    For that we had to investigate.
    CALLING VERSUS TEXTING
    “A phone call? The WORST.”
    —FEMALE FOCUS GROUP PARTICIPANT
    “If you want to talk to me, you’re going to have to call me.”
    —ANOTHER FEMALE FOCUS GROUP PARTICIPANT
    [Dumbfounded]
    —EVERY GUY IN THAT FOCUS GROUP
    The issue of calling versus texting generated a wide variety of responses in our focus groups. Generally, younger dudes were
fucking terrified
of calling someone on a phone. This didn’t surprise me that much, but I was surprised that younger women also expressed terror at the thought of a traditional phone call. “Phone calls suck and they give me anxiety,” said one twenty-four-year-old woman. “Since texting started, an actual phone call feels like an emergency,” said another. Other girls thought it was just too forward for someone to call as the first move and said that a text would be more appropriate in general.
    However, other women said receiving a phone call from a guy showed he had confidence and helped separate those men from the pack of generic “Hey wsup” texts that normally flood their messaging programs. To these women, the guys who call seem brave and mature. The phone conversations helped create a rapport that made them feel comfortable and safe enough to go out with a person they didn’t know all that well.
    A woman who came to one of our focus groups discussed how she got so fed up with text messaging that she cut off her texting service and could only be reached by phone calls. This woman never went on a date with a man again. No, she actually started dating someone soon afterward. She also claimed the guys who did work up the courage to call her were a better caliber of man and that she was, in effect, able to weed out a lot of the bozos.
    But with some women who loved phone calls, things weren’t that simple. In a rather inconvenient twist for would-be suitors, many said they loved phone calls—but had no interest in answering. “I often don’t answer, but I like receiving them,” said one woman, who seemed oblivious to how ridiculous this statement sounded.
    For this group, voice mails provided a screening system of sorts. When they explained this, it made sense to me. If the message was from someone they’d met briefly at a bar, it let them hear the guy’s voice and made it easier to sort out the creeps. One girl raved about a nice voice mail a guy had recently left her. I kindly requested she play it and heard this gem: “Hey, Lydia. It’s Sam. Just calling to say what’s up. Gimme a ring when you get a chance.”
    THAT WAS IT.
    I pleaded to know what was so great about this. She sweetly recalled that “he remembered my name, he said hi, and he told me to call him back.”
    Never mind the fact that what she described was the content of LITERALLY EVERY VOICE MAIL IN HISTORY. Name, hello, please call back. Not really a boatload of charm on display. To fail this test, a guy would have to leave a message that said: “No greeting. This is a man. I