Like Gen Z, billionaire Mark Cuban doesn’t like talking on the phone.
“No, I don’t call,” said the former Shark Tank Star and owner of the Dallas Mavericks in a TikTok video posted by Masterclass. “You know, I’ll be in touch with you via email, trust me, I do it all the time. I’m really good at it.”
But Cuban’s logic in favor of sending emails over the phone is very different from that of younger generations. He said conversing via email gave him more time to craft thoughtful responses.
“I’ll give you a fuller answer than I can over the phone,” said Cuban, who is worth an estimated $6 billion. “If we did it over the phone, I’d forget half of what we talked about because I’d have so much to do.”
Although Cuban is no longer starring Shark Tank After selling his majority stake in the Mavericks, he remained busy running Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs and serving as an investor and advisor to dozens of companies he invested in during his time on the show.
Meanwhile, Gen Z prefers email or text messaging because they worry about making phone calls. A 2024 study showed that nearly a quarter of people are so hesitant about calling that they never answer the phone. One British university even launched a course last year aimed at helping Gen Z overcome their fears.
While it’s easy to laugh at the career quirks of the younger generation, for some, hesitation is actually a deep-seated fear known as “phone phobia.” According to Verywell Mind, this form of phone anxiety can cause increased heart rate, nausea, tremors, and difficulty concentrating.
Zoia Tarasova, an anthropologist at consumer insights agency Canvas8, previously said: “This is indicative of a broader fatigue with immediacy and urgency. People are tired of a culture of trouble and an obsession with efficiency.” wealth. “People are quietly rebelling against this immediacy and taking the time to respond to these calls.”
Other business leaders even told wealth This phone-phobia trend hurts their bottom line. Casey Halloran, CEO and co-founder of online travel agency Namu Travel, said that in his 25 years in the business, management has “never seen” a “generational divide” in the way older and younger travel agents make phone calls. He also said that combating phone phobia has been a “common, disturbing topic” at his company because management recognized that younger travel agents registered less than 50% of the calls compared to older employees.
“As for solutions, we have been conducting extensive training, incentives, conducting observation calls with our senior representatives and even hiring a business psychologist,” Halloran previously said wealth. “After more than two years of fighting, we’ve almost reached the point where we’re throwing our hands up and embracing SMS and WebChat, rather than continuing to fight an uphill battle.”
Still, Cuban said that for his own business purposes, he prefers email to phone calls because he can go back and refer back to what he said.
“If we do it via email, I can always search for it,” he added.
What research tells us about communication styles at work
Like most business methods, emailing instead of talking on the phone has its pros and cons.
More than half of younger professionals believe instant messaging or email, rather than phone calls or meetings, is the best way to “get work done,” according to research from recruitment firm Robert Walters, suggesting they believe talking on the phone can be inefficient. It’s the “this could be an email” mentality.
“Younger generations are less willing to spend hours in restaurants or cafes when they can have quick discussions online,” Emilie Vignon, associate director at Robert Walters in California, wrote in the 2024 study. To be sure, Vignon also said there are “disadvantages” to just talking via email or text.
“Face-to-face interactions create meaningful connections and provide opportunities for nonverbal communication cues that build trust and rapport with clients and colleagues,” adds Vignon. “Subtleties in body language, facial expressions and tone of voice can help create a deeper understanding and connection that often cannot be adequately conveyed through text or even video chat.”
To be sure, other research from the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and the University of Chicago, as well as research from McKinsey & Company, shows that phone calls can help resolve issues faster than email, especially when employees spend nearly a third of their time on email. A 2022 study by DePaul University researcher David J. Bouvier also showed that email can easily share information and reduce stress.
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com
