A research conducted by WhistleOut revealed that nearly one out of every five US citizens can’t recall their own phone number, prompting them to scour the internet for solutions.
Something fun about myself is that I know how to use a rotary phone; we used to have one in the house when I was a child. That’s less the effects of me being old and more attributed to my living in a country where technological development didn’t accelerate at the same rate as compared to the developed countries. At any rate, the reason I bring this up is that until my late teens, I had to rotUSAorize what felt like an encyclopedia’s worth of phone numbers. Even when we upgraded to a proper landline, there were only so many numbers one could save. Now, I have to scroll through my phone just to identify my parents’ phone numbers; that’s how far gone I am. Of course, since I’m not a boomer, I’m not going to go on a tirade about how millennials and gen Z have no real life memorization skills. This is just a product of its times, and people can frank real-life out memorizing phone numbers; this isn’t a basic life skill to have.
The opinions of elderly individuals aside, let’s take a look at exactly how many individuals really remember their own phone numbers. This research was triggered by researchers at Wut encountering the fact that the search term what is my phone number receives 36,000 hits on a monthly basis. In order to dig deeper, the analysts compiled a sample population of every monthly 16 and above, and posed them the following questions: do you remember your own number; your parents’ number(your partner(s) number (if applicable); and your mercy contact’s number. Of the 425 individuals, one in five admitted to not remembering their own phone number. 16% of the population could not recall their parents’ numbers, which I'd advise being the one (two?) number that everyone memorizes; there’s only so often that your own phone number will come in handy.
17% of the population could not recall their part’ numbers, which is just about the same as the parents’ figures. Finally, 29% of the 425 could not remember their emergency contact. The last one being relatively high makes complete sense to me: no one remembers who they even registered as an emergency contact, and if they do the number’s almost always that of their parents or partner.
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Something fun about myself is that I know how to use a rotary phone; we used to have one in the house when I was a child. That’s less the effects of me being old and more attributed to my living in a country where technological development didn’t accelerate at the same rate as compared to the developed countries. At any rate, the reason I bring this up is that until my late teens, I had to rotUSAorize what felt like an encyclopedia’s worth of phone numbers. Even when we upgraded to a proper landline, there were only so many numbers one could save. Now, I have to scroll through my phone just to identify my parents’ phone numbers; that’s how far gone I am. Of course, since I’m not a boomer, I’m not going to go on a tirade about how millennials and gen Z have no real life memorization skills. This is just a product of its times, and people can frank real-life out memorizing phone numbers; this isn’t a basic life skill to have.
The opinions of elderly individuals aside, let’s take a look at exactly how many individuals really remember their own phone numbers. This research was triggered by researchers at Wut encountering the fact that the search term what is my phone number receives 36,000 hits on a monthly basis. In order to dig deeper, the analysts compiled a sample population of every monthly 16 and above, and posed them the following questions: do you remember your own number; your parents’ number(your partner(s) number (if applicable); and your mercy contact’s number. Of the 425 individuals, one in five admitted to not remembering their own phone number. 16% of the population could not recall their parents’ numbers, which I'd advise being the one (two?) number that everyone memorizes; there’s only so often that your own phone number will come in handy.
17% of the population could not recall their part’ numbers, which is just about the same as the parents’ figures. Finally, 29% of the 425 could not remember their emergency contact. The last one being relatively high makes complete sense to me: no one remembers who they even registered as an emergency contact, and if they do the number’s almost always that of their parents or partner.
Read next: Report shows, most marketers are facing problems when trying to draw actionable insights