This NYT article* can be summarized thus: people don’t call each other much anymore because they use email or text.
The phone, to me, is a secondary mode of communication to email. For personal use, I almost never pick up the phone and I certainly never want to.
For business use, I will make a call for the following reasons (in order of importance):
1. When I don’t want a conversation to be recorded for posterity for some reason
2. To explain something I’ve tried to write an email about before deciding it was too complicated to explain clearly in writing
3. To badger someone into responding to an email I’ve sent
4. Introductory calls. Cold calls are a subset here, but the vast majority of these calls happen following an introductory email
I also always pick up the phone at work, of course. But I’d say that 75% of the calls I have are made by me. Reverse ratio for emails, but most incoming is junk.
*P.S. Yglesias has a very funny commenter on this article:
God I hate New York Times Style section cultural trend pieces that are actually just anecdotes about the writer and her insufferable acquaintances.
Not Unreasonable 