In the opening scene of Channel 4’s brilliant new comedy-drama series The End of the F***ing World, lead character and latent rage vessel Alyssa snaps when a friend sends her an instant messages using her smartphone as the pair sit facing each other at a table. Seconds later her phone is lying in pieces on the floor. Alyssa, however, is an anomaly. Verbal communication is on the way out, and nowhere more than on the telephone.

Without us really noticing it, the phone call has been slowly fading out over the past few years, and a new survey by Ofcom shows that only 15% of 16 to 24-year-olds consider it the most important method of communication, compared with 36% who prefer instant messaging.

That scene with Alyssa isn’t exaggerated, either. A 2016 study showed that 49% of teenagers happily admitted that they would text or instant message someone when they were in the same room. They’re calling them Generation Mute.

These millennials don’t mess about. They don’t buy dead tree newspapers and they don’t see the point of CDs in supermarkets, irrespective of the fact that they’re only three quid a pop. They have seen our old ways of doing things and they are not having it, so get used to seeing swaths of people staring at smartphone screens, simultaneously messaging six of their mates with the grace and dexterity of a concert pianist.

Get ready, too, to see vast numbers of them crippled by repetitive strain injury in their texting thumbs. They’ll be able to 3D-print themselves easily attachable replacement digits by then, so it’s all good.

Let’s face it, the death of the phone call is long overdue. Do you enjoy listening to the sound of your own voice? Exactly. Very few of us do, so why inflict it on anyone else now that we have alternative forms of communication?

It’s not so long since the telephone was an object of fear and trepidation. Cast your mind back to the days before caller ID, when the phone rang and you had literally no idea who was trying to contact you – it could have been anyone from your closest friend to the Inland Revenue. It was proper Russian roulette stuff.

I once ignored a scheduled call from someone I really didn’t want to speak to and the phone rang for a solid 15 minutes before they eventually gave up. I’m not talking about repeated attempts over a quarter of an hour – no, this was one call and what seemed like an endless wait for me to pick up. The phone was stuffed in a cardboard box full of socks and placed in the oven in the end, lest I be driven insane by its nonstop brring-brringing.

Yes, I could have unplugged it at the wall, but I was curious as to how long the unwanted caller would last for. We’ve subsequently lost touch.

Even the ritual of making a phone call used to be an ordeal. Dialling each number individually was time-consuming in itself, not to mention the embarrassment of a wrong number or the dreaded crossed line. With hindsight, it all seems like an undertaking as laborious as pushing a marble up a custard hill using the tip of your nose.

If you see someone using a public phone box these days, your initial thought is that they’re up to no good. Cheating husband or drug dealer, obviously. Why would any rational, well-behaved person be using a public phone box (if indeed you can find one that works)?

It won’t be long until the notion of the phone call goes the same way as letter-writing – a pursuit solely for cranks who are a little too pleased with themselves or have far too much time on their hands.

But even Snapchat, emojis, GIF-based conversations and the heinous cesspit that is Twitter will soon seem quaint to us, and find themselves consigned to the history books and the basement of the National Science Museum.

I’m not a futurologist and have no idea what will take their place but it will almost certainly be brainwave-related and probably a major cause of cancer.

Fittingly, my Guardian “handler” commissioned me to write this piece via Twitter’s direct message function, as he usually does. We’ve never spoken on the telephone in over two years of association – and quite right too.

• Andy Dawson is a freelance writer. He created the Get In the Sea social media phenomenon and is the 50% of the Athletico Mince podcast that isn’t Bob Mortimer