"I'm just not a texter"

Some people say this and mean it. They'd rather ring. They hate the way a message strips a voice down to words on a screen, and they find themselves unable to write "how are you" without it sounding flat. So the messages sit, not because of a standard, but because the medium is wrong, and they'll speak to the friend properly when they see them.

Two things. The first is that this is true and it doesn't help, because the medium isn't the friendship. A message is the door, not the room. What goes through the door can be a call, a plan, a walk. But the door has to be answered, and the friends who message you are standing at it. The earlier book Ring them first describes a study by Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley in which people got back in touch with an old friend by phone or by email, and the phone gave a stronger sense of connection and wasn't the awkward experience people had predicted. So if you're a caller, call. The mistake isn't preferring a voice. The mistake is letting the preference become a reason for the open message to stay open until the call that doesn't happen either.

The second thing is that a preference for talking can be honoured in a line. "Not going to do this by text, ringing you Thursday evening, be in." That's a reply. It's two lines. It answers the door and it names when the room opens. Or send a voice note, which is talking, and takes as long as it takes to say the thing, and doesn't need a standard because nobody has one for voice notes. Or reply with a photo and nothing else. The form doesn't matter. What matters is that something comes back today.

The NHS, in its five steps for mental wellbeing, puts good relationships first and says two things that fit here. Arrange a day out with friends you haven't seen for a while. And don't rely on messaging alone to build relationships, because it's easy to get into the habit of only ever texting. I'd read that as a case for using the message to set up the thing that isn't a message. Not as a case for leaving it.

And if the truth is nearer to the earlier book The phone can wait, that you're on your phone a good deal and none of it is replying to friends, then it's worth noticing that the messages you don't answer live on the same screen as the things you scroll. The minute is there. It's being spent on something else. Being "not a texter" is a fine thing to be. It's a poor reason for a friend to hear nothing.