Work From Home? A Phone Call May Be a Rare Thing

“I have a small circle of friends, so it’s not like it’s buzzing off the hook,” Mr. Kitsch, 32, said in a phone interview. “If there is a call, it’s usually my manager. There’ll be days when I don’t go on it.

“It makes me sound like some hermit,” he said with a laugh.

He is not alone (except for when he is). As a freelance writer, I also have days, even busy ones, when I don’t speak a word aloud. Frequently, I conduct all professional and personal interactions by email or text from my apartment. A simulacrum of a bustling office is achieved by a quick survey of Facebook posts or Twitter messages.

Ten years ago, still in the social-media stone age of Friendster and not yet texting, I often talked to friends on the phone during the day, sometimes while walking or running errands.

Now, of course, hardly anyone calls, at least not without a pre-emptive “Are you free to talk?” text. Last month, I accidentally removed one of the bottom four primary buttons on my iPhone screen, and it took me a good five minutes to realize it was the “phone” function.

A recent Pew report showed that in 2012, 80 percent of cellphone users used their phones for texting; in 2007, just 58 percent did. In late 2007, according to Nielsen, monthly texts outpaced phone calls for the first time.

The continuing decline of telephone culture is perhaps most consequential for those who work at home, like Brenna Haysom, founder of Blowfish, a hangover remedy. When she switched from a corporate office job to solo entrepreneurship (she now has employees in an office), Ms. Haysom found the transition to “a full eight hours without any conversation” difficult both personally and professionally.

“Research was done entirely by Google,” she said. “One of the problems of not talking to people is you have to know what you’re looking for, instead of having a dynamic conversation with people in the industry who can tell you things you don’t even know you don’t know.” (Donald Rumsfeld would probably concur.)

Ms. Haysom compensated by making more social plans at night, but she didn’t feel comfortable calling friends during business hours. “It’s not like other people have time to talk on the phone, because they have regular jobs,” she said.

In addition, many people who choose to work at home do so out of innate antisocial tendencies or anxieties. Lack of regular conversational practice can make the periodic emergence from one’s cocoon that much more stilted.

Maura Kelly, an author of “Much Ado About Loving: What Our Favorite Novels Can Teach You About Date Expectations, Not-So-Great Gatsbys and Love in the Time of Internet Personals,” has been house-sitting in a remote area of the Hudson Valley since July while completing a novel. The house has spotty cell reception (it took three dropped calls before we could connect through Google Voice), and Ms. Kelly recalled a three-week stretch in the fall in which she had no substantial face-to-face conversations and very few, if any, phone calls.

“I don’t talk most days,” said Ms. Kelly, who, like everyone interviewed for this article, is in her 30s. That is potentially the most isolating decade for stay-at-home workers: They are no longer in their constantly in-touch and roommate-cohabitating 20s, but a family structure may not have taken shape yet.

“During the holidays,” Ms. Kelly said, “when I started interacting with people again, I kept struggling to come up with basic words, like the defogger on my car. It felt like the gears were not oiled.” But this doesn’t happen when writing. “It feels like speaking a word aloud pulls from different parts of the brain from typing at the computer,” she said.

Domenica Ruta, author of the memoir “With or Without You,” seconded that discomfort. Ms. Ruta, who puts her phone on “do not disturb” mode while she is writing (she missed an initial call to interview her because of this function), said she was “becoming more and more inarticulate about my emotional state” in speech.

“I can write a hell of an email, where it’s raw and gritty and disgusting and beautiful at times,” she said. “But then to actually speak with my voice and the wind inside of me going through the reeds of my throat, I’ll feel like I’m choking to death.” (Ms. Ruta’s definition of inarticulacy apparently excludes off-the-cuff elaborate metaphors.)