She's Gotta Have It

Men now spend more time talking on the phone than women do - 32 minutes a day, compared to 26 mins that girls expend. It’s not that women communicate less - it’s just that we do it via email and text. It all helps to prop up my theory that women are basically busier than men. On average, that is. I’m not saying I’m busier than Gordon Brown - that would just be silly. But long phone conversations are a luxury I can no longer afford. The train is one of my few windows of opportunity and who wants to share intimate details with a carriage full of strangers? (Young people, for a start. Not just on the phone, but face to face. Like when two teens sit at diagonals from each other, ignore one another for a bit and then start to swap banal trivia at top volume. Whatever happened to sitting next to someone? Has it become uncool?) No

wonder women favour the multi-tasking mediums of email and text. You can keep it as short and sweet as you like, and you can do it while commuting, late at night, at work, in the playground or while stirring pasta. There’s nothing more infuriating than sending someone a text or email and having them ring you back - unless, that is, they count as a love interest. Pre-answering machines, sensible people regarded the telephone as a monstrous imposition (Who on earth can be ringing up in the middle of lunch? etc etc); now we have alternative means of communication, there’s even more reason to reserve actual speech for emergencies. Texts and emails are a return to the spirit of the Victorian postal service’s multiple daily deliveries. What could be more civilized?
Laura Tennant