Are we losing the art of telephone conversation? | Zoe Williams

Phones are increasingly being used for anything but their original purpose - having a chat with a friend

Statistics illustrating our addiction to our smartphones come out quite frequently and receive a lot of attention for information so unsurprising; it will come as no shock to anyone that the average Briton checks her phone every 12 minutes. Indeed, I'd like to pick a fight with the blandness of the questions asked in Ofcom's latest telecommunications report. I wish they'd included: "Have you ever picked up your phone to Google where your phone is?" Or: "Have you ever smashed or otherwise been suddenly deprived of your phone, and wanted to stand in the street howling like a wolf?"

The report belongs in the news category "things we already knew, but are worried about, so will continue to pick at like a scab". Yet there is one new element to our behaviour: we've stopped using telephones for talking to one another. The number of calls made dropped for the first time in 2017. It's not a huge drop - 1.7% - and the figure may be misleading since calls made on WhatsApp and Facebook weren't counted. Three-quarters of people still believe that voice calls are important. But that's not as many - 92% - as the number who value their phones mainly for internet access.