Voice mail losing its appeal for many

Remember when a blinking voice mail indicator on your phone or answering machine used to be a badge of honor, a status symbol that meant someone was looking for you and needed urgently for you to call them back?

Now that's been replaced by an email inbox, SMS, and comments on your Facebook status. For many, that blinking light is no longer something to be proud of but an annoying nuisance that's likely to be ignored outright.

It was slow to hit me, but I now realize that I'm among the "voice mail phobics" that the New York Times discusses in this story. When I return home, I feel anxious when checking for that red light, because if it's flashing, it means I have a headache ahead that I never want to deal with.

Like many, I use a voice mail service provided by the phone company, and while that's convenient -- when I'm on the road I can check my messages from anywhere, easily -- it means dialing a gaggle of numbers and passwords and remembering the various codes required to make it all work. Naturally the process is totally different for my cell phone and my land line, too. And even though I've set up speed dial codes to make this all reasonably automated, it's still a hassle that, at the end of a long day, is the last thing I want to deal with.

The bigger headache, though, is still lying in wait. Most messages are safely deletable ("This is an important announcement. UPS will be coming to your house between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.!") but some people really want me to call them back, leaving phone numbers and email addresses that, I guess, I am expected to write down. That means finding a pen and paper and, most difficult of all, the will to care about what the caller wants. If it's so important, can't they just send an email? If paper isn't within easy reach, I usually end up figuring that if it really is important enough, they'll call back.

And now I know: I am not alone. One study shows that 30 percent of all voice mail goes unretrieved for three days or more, and 20 percent of people rarely -- or never -- check their voice mail at all. On the other hand, text messages are responded to considerably faster, almost universally, even by older users.

I will say there's one reason I end up checking my voice mail that trumps all the others: It's the only way to stop that aggravating red light from blinking.