Simultaneously, the number of calls being picked up has dropped to less than one in two (48%), a four percent decline since Hiya initially released the State of the Phone Call report in January. The number of calls Americans make is being impacted as well. On average, people make and receive a total of 178 calls per month, a 17% decrease since the beginning of the year.

“It should come as no surprise that the pervasiveness of spam calls is having an impact on how Americans use their phones. Now less than one in two phone calls is answered,” says Hiya CEO Alex Algard. “At the same time, there’s been a significant increase in pick up rate for calls that are identified as legitimate businesses. This shows that trust in who is on the other end of the phone is absolutely paramount to consumers these days.”

Over the first half of the year, Hiya found that 69% of calls identified as a legitimate business were picked up by consumers, a 16% increase from the beginning of the year. Calls from businesses to consumers have also nearly doubled in duration, lasting an average of 2 minutes and 53 seconds, up from 54 seconds in January.

\While robocalls have made people wary of answering their phones, it’s still the preferred form of communication for many industries, from healthcare to financial services to education, which underscores the importance of accurately identifying both unwanted and wanted calls, according to Hiya.