Do you have voice note fatigue? How the messaging feature is leaving us overwhelmed
In August 2013, WhatsApp released what has gone on to be perhaps its most divisive feature: the voice note. Here, just shy of a decade on, writer and former fan of the medium, Lauren Clark, charts our relationship with the very modern form of communication.
I’ve never been an early adopter of anything – Y2K fashion (the second time around, obviously), Coleen Hoover novels, cold water swimming – and have accepted my fate of being embarrassingly late to the party. However, one area where I was inadvertently ahead of the game were voice notes.
Soon after WhatsApp launched the handy messaging feature in 2013, I was swiftly pinging ‘VNs’ to my contacts. I figured, as a reluctant text-er, that this was a more efficient way to stay in touch. Not everyone was a willing recipient, mind you, with some friends and family barely containing their disdain upon having to take the time to press ‘play’ in lieu of glancing at a written response.
Zip seven years forward to 2020. The pandemic hit, lockdowns were enacted and, with ample time to fill the silence on the sofa and during walks, the volume of audio messages in my chats swiftly crept up. Indeed, research published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications declared a ‘normalisation’ of voice notes during this period as a way to combat social isolation.
Listen up
As the voice note function on WhatsApp celebrates its tenth birthday this summer, they’re very much a core part of our communication toolkit. There were more than seven billion such audio messages shared last year alone on the app, while a recent YouGov poll found that 30% of people now use them to communicate ‘weekly, daily or multiple times a day’.
But these days speaking into your phone (momentarily a foreign concept to millennials and Gen Z) is not just the domain of WhatsApp, or even other messaging apps like iMessage, Telegram and Chinese instant messaging app WeChat, the latter being where it actually began in 2011. Voice notes have spread onto social media, (notably Instagram) dating (like Hinge, where usage was up 37% between January and February of this year) and work (with even Slack and Teams are in on the trend).
But has the increased prevalence sent us on double-speed towards peak voice note? Memes now mock those who send ultra-long audio messages, like this Twitter post showing an apparently exasperated Bella Hadid on the phone.
Such ‘personal podcasts’, which I've known to run close to the 30 minute mark, used to feel like music to my ears, with updates on everything from shock break-ups and bitchy bosses to the minutiae of what someone was planning to cook for dinner. But I’ve started to clock my evolving resentment in recent months as the weekly voice note pile-up has meant I've given over entire Saturday mornings listening and responding.
I’m not alone. Conversations with friends of late have also illuminated a growing mutual fatigue for the formerly handy medium. Where once the string of little green mic icons felt like an intimate audio treat, now they’re giving overwhelm.
Straight talking
Sara* traces this shift to the pandemic when voice notes began to be shared more vociferously. ‘We were all bored and keen for some sort of connection, and hearing someone audibly can hit in a way that reading their words typed out can’t,’ says the 28-year-old journalist, who lives in Leeds.
‘But, pretty quickly, I started to be bothered by the fact friends were using them because they couldn’t be bothered to type things out. This rapidly evolved into minutes-long clips, half of which were “ummmms”, “what was I saying?” and “do you know what I mean?”.’
These days, Sara finds herself increasingly wanting to hit pause. ‘For me, the format has become a nuisance rather than a handy tool,’ she admits. ‘Checking WhatsApp and seeing that one person has sent three consecutive voice notes, each one minutes long, elicits feelings of “I cannot be bothered with this”.
Post-pandemic, with life is as busy as it ever was, the last thing I want to do at the end of a stressful work day is to weed out the actual information someone is trying to give me.’
Lauren Ashcroft agrees that we’ve surreptitiously entangled ourselves in a web of spoken word. ‘I’m a perfectionist, so I feel an urge to sit down and reply properly to voice notes,’ explains the 31-year-old from London. ‘Yet, when daily life means there’s rarely any time to stop, I’ve ended up putting off listening and responding for days or even weeks at a time. I then feel so guilty for not keeping on top of them all.’
It’s a slow but sure impact on wellbeing that has started to affect Holly Stevens too. ‘Voice notes have become another “inbox” to manage and keep up with,’ says the 39-year-old London-based PR business owner.
‘While they used to be a great way to relay a quick answer on the move, they are now long, and you often have to take notes to keep track.’ Exacerbating the situation is that it’s not just loved ones communicating with her this way, but also work clients, preventing her from simply opting out.
Hear this
But in order to decipher where voice notes have turned problematic for some, it’s important to understand why many of us got hooked in the first place. To state the obvious: they’re terribly convenient, with no need to chance a phone call, pause to tap out a lengthy text or doll up for video.
‘The time-saving factor can be a huge benefit, especially for people always on-the-go, find it difficult to type or already spend long periods staring at a screen,’ says Eloise Skinner, psychotherapist and author of But Are You Alive?. ‘It takes the stress out of communication.’
Not least because recordings can often be made at the same time as doing another task, meaning the medium fits seamlessly into our busy lifestyles. It was this ease of communication that drew Dr Serena Rakha to voice notes during the pandemic. ‘I loved how it facilitated casual chats with friends, that I could dip in and out of at my convenience,’ explains the 40-year-old from Birmingham.
Greater still is the evidence that voice is superior than written form when it comes to getting the message across. ‘For a lot of people, speaking is a more natural form of communication. It predates written language by tens of thousands of years and, as such, our brains are evolutionarily primed for processing it,’ explains psychotherapist Sophie Scott.
‘Things can get lost in translation with text messages,’ continues Scott. ‘However, voice notes enable you to hear the care, sarcasm, stress or joy in the other person’s voice, fostering intimacy.’ She explains how tone, pitch, pace and volume all help to convey emotional information and nuances that written language can struggle to express.
Indeed, one study led by the University of California found an increase in ‘empathic accuracy’ with voice communication, while research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology highlighted greater connection.
This makes sense to Lauren, as she unravels how they ended up as her dominant form of messaging medium. ‘I felt an increased closeness to friends,’ she notes. ‘It’s also changed the way I communicate in my career in sales, with colleagues and even prospective clients, I feel like I can convey more and avoid misunderstandings.’
Press pause
That said, Scott warns that voice notes can invite us to take multitasking to the extreme. ‘Our constantly shifting attention span can significantly affect our productivity and ability to retain information in the long run,’ she explains. ‘What’s more, media multitasking in particular has been linked to increased levels of stress, depression and anxiety. We know that the constant switching of attention can lead to feelings of overwhelm and difficulty in focusing on individual tasks.’
Remember that meme of Bella with a notepad? Dr Lisa Debrou, a clinical psychologist at HelloSelf, also points out that voice notes can reach a point where they stop being convenient. ‘If it’s too lengthy or complicated, it may actually be a stressor to the receiver,’ she explains.
‘In contrast to natural verbal conversation, where we can break down information into chunks, it relies on them retaining lots of information.’ So, in the same way that meetings can often be ‘put in an email’, if a voice note requires taking minutes, there’s an argument that it should take place IRL.
Additionally, in the age of the Very Long Voice Note™, there’s the temptation for some to use the function as a free therapy session. ‘Audio messages have the potential to turn into self-indulgent monologues and make us more solipsistic: I mean, how often would you speak at someone for seven minutes flat? Never,’ points out Scott. Which doesn’t just lead to harmless waffle, she adds, explaining: ‘For individuals who already lack self-awareness, voice notes can encourage a brain dump – basically just downloading all your cr*p on to someone else.’
As well as being potentially disrespectful, Scott believes that it isn’t actually even beneficial to the speaker. ‘In two-way conversations, we get feedback that helps us to adjust our behaviour.
This is crucial for the development of social skills, such as building empathy, learning active listening and being receptive,’ she explains. ‘We’re forced to consider the other person’s perspective and emotions, whereas with a monologue, this requirement is lessened and we can become too focused on our own perspective.’
Green light
So, how to find balance with voice notes? If there was an etiquette handbook made for this form of digital communication, then Scott indicates that consideration for the recipient should make the first page. ‘Consider how long – and in what way – you would talk at someone in real-life and reflect that in your voice notes,’ she emphasises.
‘Keeping them to a respectable length, say two minutes, will help you to streamline your thoughts and shows an understanding of the other person’s predicament.’
If you, like me, struggle to be concise, then the key is to think about your topic points in advance. ‘Try to plan what you might want to say before you start recording, so that you don’t ramble on,’ advises Scott. ‘Use them simply to convey a sentiment and then suggest meeting up or scheduling a phone call. Factual content, such as product recommendations or suggesting dates, is best kept to a text so that they can be registered and acted upon.’
In terms of your own wellbeing, Skinner recommends that boundaries are forged on an individual basis. ‘From a place of understanding and awareness, you can relay how you’d ideally like to be communicated with,’ she says. This can include when you’ll listen and respond to messages, or that you’ll keep audio messages purely for pleasure rather than work.
Talking of which, Sara – who believes her relationship with voice notes reflects her wider feelings of fatigue with WhatsApp – has already started to put this into practice. ‘Between hen chats, group trip planning and family conversations, the whole thing has begun to feel like another piece of admin, rather than somewhere to keep up with loved ones,’ she shares. ‘I’ve started to implement weeks in which I delete it entirely, and tell people to text or call me, if they need me.’
Which sounds like music to my ears.
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