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- The iPhone has a new feature that screens unknown callers.
- Etiquette has shifted so people think they need to text first before calling.
- But I say — let the calls flow! Bring back spontaneous calls!
It's 2026, and I say it's time to bring call just calling people. No calendar appointment, no text first. Just pick up the phone and call.
We must do this to save the very fabric of our society. It's time for us to take back what was promised to us. It's time to reach and out touch someone. It's time to raw dial.
Right now, the beautiful art of the phone call is under attack. It's being threatened with extinction. Those ancient skills that made us great — prank calling, having a clever outgoing answering machine message, knowing how to answer an unknown caller — those things are already gone.
Big Tech is driving this ruinous change. But we have the power to reverse course and resist. All you have to do is pick up the phone.
The iPhone's new unknown caller screening feature
The latest iPhone iOS 26 update has a new feature: unknown call screening. This means that when it's turned on, callers who aren't saved in your contacts will either be sent straight to voicemail or asked their reason for calling before your phone rings. (They record their reason for calling, and then it's spirited to you for review to make the choice whether to answer the call.)
Sure, you say, most of those unknown calls are junk. Well, not exactly — there's already a spam filter that's separate from unknown callers. I wouldn't say it's perfect, but I find it's pretty accurate in assessing "spam risk." (Android users here will probably laugh, since they've had this feature for a long time.)
This feature — unknown call screening — is for non-spam unknown callers — a doctor's office, your kid's school, a friend with a new number, someone from work whose number you don't have saved yet. Sure, some of these may be annoyances that you don't actually want to deal with (I don't want to "deal" with my dentist reminding me of my appointment, but that's life). Still, having a phone number where people who need to reach you can reach you is the point of the phone.
Although this feature isn't on by default (you can turn it on in Settings > Apps > Phone > Screen Unknown Callers), some people are using it, which is driving everyone else nuts.
The Wall Street Journal reports that "call screening is aggravating the rich and powerful" — they're apparently annoyed by we plebes having a personal call-screening assistant. While that sounds like delightful schadenfreude on the surface, it belies a nasty trend: Do we all want to act like our time is more valuable than everyone else's? No!
No more emails making plans for calls
I noticed a change at work first during the early pandemic, when Zoom was becoming the norm instead of phone calls. I found myself scheduling video calls for things I would've previously just done as a regular, spontaneous phone call. This impulse — wanting to see a face during a lonely time — sent us all down a bad and dangerous road.
Now, I can see that it's becoming more and more common to expect people in professional settings to schedule a phone call in advance, with an agreed-upon time. Sure, this makes some sense by helping busy people avoid phone tag.
But doesn't it annoy you to have to spend several emails — sometimes over the course of several days, agreeing on a time — when you could've just made the call? How many paragraph-long text conversations have you had that could've been settled in a two-minute call?
Break free! Unshackle yourself! Just call someone! Do it! It's easy, and people actually like it!
As a journalist, cold calling people is part of the job, as well as answering calls from unknown numbers. So, as a veteran of the cold-call art, let me give you my simple, polite tip: Just say, "Is this an OK time to talk?" Sometimes they'll say no, and you can just call later. No biggie! Everyone lives!
Phone etiquette is always changing, but calls should remain the same
Since mobile phones because ubiquitous in the early 2000s, we've had constantly shifting norms around phone etiquette, especially as incremental changes keep coming. Gen Z has given up on saying "hello" when answering the phone, thinking it's the caller's responsibility to talk first. (There's some logic to this, but it flies in the face of a century of phone etiquette.)
But the core function of the phone — calling someone to talk — has remained the same since Alexander Graham Bell.
We must preserve the beautiful tradition and sacred art of yapping. We must make phone calls. We must not live in fear that someone might not pick up the phone or that we're bothering them. We must do "wazzzzzzaaaap" to our friends when they answer. We must occasionally pick up wrong numbers and be friendly about it. We must embrace that phone calls are human and imperfect, and that sometimes it's not a good time and they've got to call you back later. We must dial with hope and abandon in our souls. We must answer rando numbers with love and camaraderie in our hearts.
My point is: Don't turn on the unknown call screening feature.