Livelinks Blog

The telephone was perhaps one of the most ground-breaking inventions of the 19th century. It allowed us to connect with others remotely — an ability that is still central to our technology today. However, there are certain benefits to talking on the phone that modern technologies like texting and email simply can’t replace.

Here are 3 surprising facts you didn't know about phone chat:

For a lot of people, texting has replaced talking on the phone. If you ask someone how often they text versus how often they make a call, their answer will undoubtedly come back in favor of texting. However, texting makes us feel less connected than a phone call does. Talking on the phone is a much more intimate experience because you can hear someone's voice and sense what they are feeling. Emojis are hardly a replacement for actual emotion, and a recent survey by Survey Monkey showed that 85% of people find it harder to decipher tone from a text message than from a phone call. It makes sense that we would feel closer to someone when we can tell how they feel.

You may have heard this advice before, and it probably just seemed true. Intuitively, most people know this to be true. But did you know that there is actual scientific data to back up this statement? An article on Discovery explored the scientific validity of the power of smiling while chatting on the phone and came back with some fascinating results. Not only are we able to tell when someone is smiling on the phone, we can also tell what kind of smile it is. "Smiling affects how we speak, to the point that listeners can actually identify the type of smile based on sound alone..."

While it's easy to lie and spin stories on social media and online dating profiles, it's a lot harder to deceive when talking on the phone. This is because as human beings, we are extremely adept at perceiving a person's traits and emotional and mental state just by talking to them. Studies have shown that people who listen to samples of other people's voices are incredibly accurate at guessing traits such as weight, height and age — just as much as if they were looking at a photograph of those speakers! This is why voice is such an important part of personal attraction. Just as we are attracted to a person because of how they look, we are also attracted to people based on how they sound.

Are you surprised by any of these facts, or did it all make perfect sense to you? Most people know intuitively that talking is a better way of connecting than email or texting, so why don't we apply that knowledge to our dating lives? As datingadvice.com aptly put it in their blog post Livelinks Chatline Connects Local Singles in Phone Conversations Full of Romantic Possibilities, "The way a person talks isn't the same as the way a person types. So, if you want to get an accurate sense of who someone is, you have to actually hear them talk. You can do that by picking up the phone and having live conversations with local date prospects on Livelinks."

Start today by calling Livelinks Chatline and making a connection that counts. Remember, phone chat is free for women, and men get a chat line free trial!