Why are people so phobic about phone messages?

I have noticed that a huge number of my friends have a tendency to call me and then not leave a message. A handful will then text me after they’ve called if I don’t pick up but, for the most part, I think people expect me to call them back if I see that they’ve called. I hate calling people back if I don’t know why they called in the first place. Even worse are the people whose numbers I don’t have who call five or six times in the space of ten minutes rather than leave a message.

In addition, people seem phobic about checking their messages. Often, I will call someone and say something like, “I’m about to go into work, but the movie’s at 5 so meet me there at 4:30.” Then, I’ll get a text which I won’t see until several hours later, because I’m at work saying, “You called, what’s up?” or I will talk to that person later and ask them if they got my message, or call them from the movie theater at 4:30 and they’ll say, “No, I just called you back. I didn’t listen to your message.”

So, can the collective enlighten me? Why are people so afraid of leaving/listening to voice messages?

This question was inspired because I just recently changed my outgoing voice mail message to say, “Please leave a message and I’ll call you back. If you do not leave a message then I will not call you back.