The short version
We gave about 1,000 American smartphone users a small, everyday choice: to make a restaurant reservation, would you rather call or text? 60% chose to text. Only 40% would pick up the phone.
For something as routine as booking a table — a task the phone was literally invented for — most people would now rather type than talk.
This is the “phone-call anxiety” story in one stat
There’s a documented shift here, sometimes called telephobia: a growing discomfort with unscheduled, real-time calls. A call is demanding — it happens now, on someone else’s timing. A text is asynchronous, low-pressure, and leaves a record of exactly what was agreed.
The gender divide is the real headline
Women break toward texting nearly two to one. Men split exactly down the middle. (Non-binary leans heavily to text too, though it’s a small sample at n=23.)
Every generation prefers texting — until 65
Two things stand out. The youngest group (18–24) is actually the least text-skewed of the under-65 crowd — likely because they do more messaging inside apps than over SMS. And 65–74 is the only group that flips back to calling (61%). (n=18, directional.)
Why this matters for any business that takes bookings
If 60% of people would rather text than call you — 64% among women — a phone number as your only contact point quietly turns away most of how customers want to reach you. Salons, dentists, auto shops, agents, clinics — any appointment-based business sits on the same mismatch. The ones that let people text to book, confirm, and reschedule simply meet customers where they already are.