Gen Z Woman Asks How People Remembered Phone Numbers Before The Year 2000
She wanted to know if people really did memorize numbers without having them written down.
NDAB Creativity | Shutterstock There are a lot of things Gen Z doesn’t quite understand about how the world used to work before it was taken over by technology. It just doesn’t really make sense to them since things have changed so much so rapidly. Writing for Smithsonian Magazine, Michelle Delgado said that the first cell phone call was made in 1973, but that’s certainly not when they became widely available.
It wasn’t until the early 2000s that cell phones really became ubiquitous. This means that a time existed before you could easily enter someone’s contact information into your phone. So what did people do before then when they needed to call someone? One Gen Zer wondered just that.
A young woman asked how people used to keep track of phone numbers before cell phones on Reddit.
In the website’s r/NoStupidQuestions forum, a Gen Zer asked something that certainly fit that theme. “Whenever I watch TV shows or movies [and] they [are] based in [the] pre-2000s, they will call their friends or family by typing their number using no note or anything,” she observed. “I know TV isn’t real but I would have thought they would add the detail of copying it off a piece of paper or something.”
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Other Redditors gently let her know the truth. “Yeah, pretty much,” one person said. “I had all the important numbers (metaphorically) burned into my brain, and a handwritten phone number book at home for the numbers I used less often. Still remember my best friend’s phone number from 30 years ago, for example.”
Another user shared some information that might have shocked the unsure Gen Zer. “It was so much easier to memorize them than [to] have to look them up every time you wanted to call,” they said. A third person added, “And what people need to remember is that by calling them you were physically punching in numbers. That repetition builds memory.”
Not all Gen Zers are this clueless when it comes to how the world worked in the ancient days before cell phones.
Personally, I was a bit shocked by this question. I myself am a Gen Zer, although I’m admittedly at the older end of the spectrum. I can still remember the days before cell phones were commonly used, when people had all their frequently called numbers memorized.
Perhaps most importantly, I still have many of the most important numbers I may need to call memorized in case of an emergency. I didn’t really plan it that way — it just happened. But the old-timers think it’s a good idea.
“You should still memorize important numbers,” one Reddit user said. “Parents, siblings and significant others in case of an emergency. It’s not hard to remember them if you practice just a little for, like, a day or so.”
It’s true that people really don’t have phone numbers memorized today.
WhistleOut, a consumer technology website, conducted a survey to find out how many phone numbers people had memorized. It was all inspired by the fact that SEMRush said the phrase “what is my phone number” is searched 36,000 times each month. As for their survey, 21% of participants admitted that they had Googled their own phone number before.
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When it comes to knowing other people’s numbers, the results were pretty dismal, especially for Gen Z. Only 7.15% of 18- to 24-year-olds had two to five numbers from their favorites memorized. For 25- to 34-year-olds, the number was 9.7%.
The fact is, people just don’t need to have phone numbers memorized these days. There’s no reason to do so when you can input them in your smartphone and pull them up with just a few taps of your fingers. But, as some Redditors warned, this could be a problem in an emergency, so it’s probably a good idea for even the youngest among us to memorize a few important numbers.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
