Phone sex can be a difficult conversation, whether you’re doing the deed or talking about it — the interplay between our sex lives and screen time is certainly a sensitive subject.
Phone Sex Is (And Has Been) a Real Thing!
By no means was Alexander Graham Bell having steamy phone conversations, but phone sex goes back pretty early into the history of telecommunication. Seriously, phone lines have been blowing up for a while now. Here’s a brief history.
For decades phone systems were operated by professionals called “phone operators.” This group was largely female-based, and their job was to work the switchboards and do other technical stuff like terminating the call once the two speakers said goodbye. Funny enough, even these women got some action from strangers on the lines that they operated. According to an article by Getmaude, many of these women received proposals from strangers who simply liked the sounds of their voices.
Around the 1950s this thing called the rotary was invented (that phone you stick your finger in and rotate to dial). The rotary led to the decline of phone operators. Once the need for a phone operator was gone, people began to have more … intimate conversations via telephone. Eventually, people realized there was an industry to be built here, and boy did they capitalize on it.
The history of telecommunications is rich in jargon and, frankly, not that relevant but here’s what you need to know: by the late 1980s, the sex-line telephone industry was worth 2.4 billion dollars. After the phone sex boom, the Federal Communications Committee tightened restrictions and things slowly started to fade out. However, freaky phone time didn’t end after the boom plateaued —all thanks to the internet.
Along Came the Internet
Snapchat brought on a moral panic for users and parents of users alike. The app promises that snaps sent back and forth are going to disappear, but what if they don’t?
Between the years of 2011-2019, there was an over-blown paranoia of teens sexting via the app. In reality, a study found that only 3 percent of teens regularly sext.
Sexting in the modern age has never been the epidemic that the media made it out to be. Is it because people are afraid of having their nudes leaked? Or are phones, despite their inanimate nature, acting as the modern-day operator sucking the intimacy out of the act?
Can Love and Screens Coexist?
Though out-loud phone calls are less common than texting, sending pictures or voice memos, phone sex still exists, just in a different format than it used to.
Like most things that have to do with sex, sexting or phone sex has a stigma around it as something to be laughed at. Phone-sex jokes have cropped up as the butt of talk show jokes and sitcoms for years, but VALLEY doesn’t think it should be completely written off.
For those who are in a long-distance relationship, having intimate via phone calls or text is a good way to keep the candle burning. Experts recommend it to keep the chemistry alive and get excited to see your partner again after a long time.
Some may argue that it doesn’t feel as personal as the real thing because of the anonymity of it. The facelessness of it all is understandably a little black mirror like, but it also allows for fantasies to fly free. With no need to consider physical logistics, anything is possible.
The Cringe Factor
Honestly, there is nothing natural about explicitly saying what you want to be doing in bed. It can seem cheesy (it kind of is) and like a fabricated version of something that should never feel forced. The criticism against using cell phones as a means of getting-it-on carry a lot of weight.
Maybe the blue light of a phone screen sterilizes the mood and takes away the romance of the whole ordeal. The old saying goes that absence makes the heart grow fonder. If the option of phone sex or even a quick image is always available, then does that mystique and yearning get lost?
It’s hard to come to a conclusion about this one. Perhaps, you should try it for yourself and let VALLEY know if you’d do it again! Let us hear what you have to say (and we’ll try not to blush) by tweeting us on X @VALLEYmag!
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