Can voicenotes bring you closer?

In defence of the Gen Z approach to connection

I’m midway through a soliloquy about my Saturday when I fall victim to a side-eye so severe, my cheeks flush like a chastised child. Like any good millennial worth their Audible subscription, I’m utilising the four and a half minutes between exiting the Tube and entering the office in the most productive way possible. And having made a public point of KPI-ing myself on my ability to connect with my friends (the ramifications of which I’ll save for another day), this morning’s to-do list task is voicenoting my mate on mat leave.

Somewhere between newsletter writing and nap schedules, we’ve been failing on the most basic tenet of friendship: putting ourselves in front of each other and having a conversation. And while our three decades of friendship have seen us pen postcards, write letters and call landlines (I will never not know the number of her parent’s house phone) it’s perhaps the most contemporary of comms strategies that’s seeing us through this latest life stage. If only voicenotes didn’t make you feel like such a twat.

Sound advice

If the voicenote feels like a modern malignance, it’s been bothering people for a while. Back in August, the voicenote turned 10. And a decade on from WhatsApp’s launch of the function, the platform reports that users are sending an average of 7 billion of them daily. Unsurprisingly for a generation with WhatsApp installed on their very first phones, Gen Z are at it the most; 42% of this age group send them monthly or more in the UK, according to YouGov data published last year. But millennials like me aren’t far behind, with almost a third of us admitting to using them in the same survey.

Admitting, because as connective tools go, this one’s as Marmite as they come. A quick Google reveals think pieces on the topic headlined with words like ‘tyranny’ and ‘poison’, with the repercussive accusations ranging from rampant egotism to chronic narcissism. As my brother-in-law put it to me when I deigned to drop a voicenote into the thread I share with him and my sister, assuming the other person has the inclination to listen to your stream of consciousness is ‘the epitome of arrogance’. (He loves me really).  

But since my friend had her baby four months ago, our ritual of voicenoting each other most days has come to feel invaluable. And while ours isn’t the only friendship in which this back-and-forth features, if research is to be believed, it’s among the most vulnerable. Last month, Allison P Davis, features writer for New York Magazine and The Cut, did that magical thing that only expertly-executed journalism can. In a 6,000 word essay entitled ‘Adorable little detonators’, Allison articulated an idea that I’d filed away in a cognitive folder marked ‘don’t open’ since my own friends started having babies: that your 30s represent a challenging social time, whether you become a parent or not.