My mother has always been, and still is, a phone talker. During my youth, she allowed me to get my own phone line so that my chatty preteen friends wouldn’t interrupt her conversation while she’d gab the afternoon away—always multitasking as she washed dishes, smoked cigarettes, and cooked our dinner.

There are myriad ways to efficiently communicate these days, and they’ve organized themselves into a hierarchy that’s hard to break out of. The text, which has taken top billing against my will, reigns supreme. There’s email, which is reserved for work, making far-out plans, and less formal invitations; there’s Facebook and the dreaded Messenger pop-up. And the seemingly antiquated phone call, which I share on occasion with a handful of girlfriends that I’ve known since before I started menstruating—and, of course, my mom.

I call my mom when I need serious advice but also when I just want to chat. We recently had a delightful 30-minute conversation devoted entirely to the virtues of dry shampoo. I realized that such pleasurable nonsense could not have happened over text and wondered why I stopped calling other people in my life for such simple acts of joy. So I decided to spend a week putting the iPhone to my ear. Here’s what I learned.

Calling someone on the phone that you have a text message-only relationship with can trigger an emergency response. Last year, my 17-year-old niece texted to ask if she could call me in 10 minutes. This is known as the pre-text, and I began sweating so profusely that I had to wipe my hands with a dishrag before I could successfully text back to tell her I’d wait to call 911. It turns out that my niece was totally fine, but is 17 and I’d never spoken to her on the phone for that reason. When we no longer use our iPhones to talk to each other, an entirely new list of problems arises: Do you pre-text before a call? Should there be a legitimate reason for a chat—like a meeting or sudden illness? And apparently, the voicemail is dying a slow death, too. Upon embarking on this experiment, I learned that many people no longer find this to be a useful tool, and I’ve been leaving lengthy messages that have become lost in the universe.

If you want to make someone feel totally awkward, give them a ring out of the blue and tell them you want to chat. The first two minutes of a phone conversation with someone who’s not your own mother feel awkward. But once you get that whole why-the-hell-are-you-calling-me thing out of the way, it’s like riding a bike. I was a little out of practice at calling friends, even though I’m often interviewing people on the phone for my job, and I found myself stumbling over words during the initial hello. But once we moved past the weirdsies, it was smooth sailing, and the conversations flowed naturally.

When I started this experiment, I didn’t realize how much personal time it takes to have a meaningful phone conversation. I’d often get on the horn with a friend and we’d chat for an hour-plus. But that’s because it felt so great to connect with each other’s human voice. Something that I once loved about texting is that it felt brief—a means to answer a question without the need to get on the phone, like obtaining an address for a holiday card or asking for quick directions. Since, texting has turned into our primary means of communication and I can easily get sucked into a half-hour conversation filled with silly gifs and photos of cats. Both means of communication take time out of your day, but I learned that having a real conversation with friends felt both constructive and worthwhile.

Once I realized that being on the phone required a decent chunk of time, I used it as an excuse to get outside and go for a walk. In a world where we’re obsessed with multitasking (guilty!), walking and talking was a better combo than scrolling through Facebook or glancing at my email mid-convo. And devoting my full attention felt more authentic to the person on the other end of the line. It’s also beneficial to me as I got some low-impact exercise and soaked up some vitamin D. On one sunny Sunday, I made three phone calls and walked around my neighborhood, totaling over 5 miles.

I kicked off the experiment with a call to my best friend, Jona, of 33 years. This call was not totally out of my comfort zone, as we grew up talking to each other on wall phones and nowadays we mix chatting with texting. She’s the kind of friend that always picks up. Case in point: I called her at 3 P.M., as she was simultaneously navigating the carpool lane and wrestling with a fishing hook that was lodged in her dog’s mouth. Is it me or would most people let this go to voicemail? We had a 45-minute long conversation about each other’s family, our fathers’ deaths, and our upcoming high school reunion. It was the highlight of my day—or even my week.

The next day, I chatted with another bestie, Sarissa, about our mothers, about her being a mother, and all the good stuff in life; the stuff you can’t get in a text message. Later in the week, while thinking about my dear friend Courtney and her new spa, I was feeling inspired. Instead of sending an in-depth text or email, I decided to just pick up the phone and call her. And much to my surprise, she didn’t think I was totally crazy, and later called me back and left a voicemail (it’s not dead!) giving me a quick update on her life. Sure, it’s not an actual conversation, but I missed hearing her voice—even if we’ve been playing phone tag ever since.

It turns out, most people I called expressed that they like talking on the phone and missed this aspect of daily life. While chatting shoptalk with a fellow freelancer, Kara, she sang the praises of phone calls. Once a self-proclaimed non-phone talker, Kara tells me that she realized that this new habit helps her to feel less self-absorbed than a text message because talking on the phone gives each person a chance to ask how the other is doing. In fact, she now regularly picks up the phone and talks to her friends.

“We discuss our weeks, our hopes, our goals and, for me at least, these conversations act as necessary checks and balances on whatever issue seems fraught in the moment,” she says. “Getting out of your head and opening up about what’s going on—without the awkwardness of trying to have an in-depth chat at a crowded coffee shop—makes friendships even more intimate and extraordinary.”

I recently saw a Facebook post from an old colleague expressing his desire for more phone calls and face-to-face time with friends due to his frustration with online dialogue. Actual conversations feel so much more organic and authentic than a text because you’re saying what’s on your mind in the moment—rather than something you think about and often curate because that will stay in the universe (aka your iPhone) forever. When ending a conversation with my friend Diana, who lives across two time zones, I told her simply that I wanted to hear her voice, and while it wasn’t the same as being with her, that talk was far better than any text or email I could have received. I’m calling it: Calling is coming back.