The new payphone outside a coffee shop on a Boston University campus is a strange sight: with its canary yellow box and the sticker pasted across the top reading “Call a Boomer.” What passersby can’t see and don’t know is that over 2,000 miles away in Reno, Nevada, another payphone box sits in a common area at a senior housing community. Its sticker, in contrast, says “Call a Zoomer.” The experiment, created by Matter Neuroscience, was designed to bridge generational divides and address loneliness in the two groups experiencing the highest levels of social isolation: young adults and seniors. If a Zoomer picks up the phone outside of Pavement Coffee House, it automatically calls the phone in the recreation area at the Volunteers of America affordable senior housing community. If a Boomer in the recreation area picks up the phone, it automatically dials the box on the street outside the coffee shop. Two phones, two generations, instant connection. In a video that garnered 18 million views on the page’s Instagram, April the Boomer picks up the phone and connects with Charlotte the Zoomer. She asks if the Zoomer has any life advice to share, a reverse of traditional roles one might think. The generational G-force of that reversal only deepened when Charlotte replied that she thinks people should just get off their phones and spend more time outside to meet people like them. If stereotyping is a fault in our stars, the example of April and Charlotte perhaps goes to show how much each generation has to learn and share with one another. It also goes to show what a great idea Matter Neuroscience had.
