The Voice Note Can't Fix Us

The least controversial take of 2025? We need to socialize more. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican, a vegan or a cattle rancher, a Midwest Princess or a Brat — everyone seems to agree that our isolation "epidemic" demands urgent solving. And in the scramble to strengthen our bonds, many are lifting up the voice note as an easy way to promote deeper connection. But is more chatter really what we need?

Whether you like it or not, the voice note is worming its way into American life. Of the 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed by YouGov and Vox in 2023, 43 percent reported using voice notes at least weekly, compared to 30 percent of the general population. And in other parts of the world, voice messages have been the go-to for years. Users of WhatsApp — the most popular communication app worldwide — exchanged over 7 billion voice messages globally every day in 2022.

As I wrote this, my friend sent a 40-second voice note about crystals to our group chat. Another friend responded gleefully: "Voice notes forever! Like a podcast for your fwends," she wrote. (For the uninitiated, that's "friends" in baby talk.)

She's right, of course. Voice notes have frequently been compared to private mini podcasts, TikToks without visuals. So it's no surprise that the voice note has exploded in popularity at a time when podcasts and TikToks dominate the airwaves. It's all part of what I'm calling our "chatter culture," the social pressure to yap for the sake of yapping, until all that yapping converges into white noise. In our chatter culture, it doesn't really matter what you say as long as you say it the loudest.

Nowhere is the downside of chatter culture more apparent than in Washington, where chatter has astonishing power right now. In the aftermath of the election, analysts pointed to the influence of podcasts and TikToks, which swarmed the internet with alt-right chatter about traditional masculinity, transgender issues, and immigration in the final weeks before Nov. 5. Months later, we are now facing a painful inflection point for our nation: the hostile, undemocratic unraveling of our Constitution, led by a man who got to where he is by being the loudest and most relentless yapper. A man who will talk over anyone just to get his own point across.

Content creators, and apparently certain politicians, have license to yap uninterrupted (and un-fact-checked) to their audiences — on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, even many TV news programs — and their yapping is ceaseless. Voice notes, though often just innocuous exchanges among friends, extend that same structure. The voice note isn't designed for seamless back-and-forth; it cultivates more one-way conversation than an actual exchange of ideas. If we were all as comfortable with human-to-human dialogue as we are with monologuing at our phones, we might be in a different place, socially and politically. But our culture of chatter prevents us from ever really listening.

If it wasn't obvious, I'm more of a written text girl myself. I'm of the generation that fears phone calls like we once feared monsters under the bed, and every voice note I receive has the capacity to trigger my fight-or-flight. I don't like that the iMessage version auto-deletes within minutes of a listen-through. I don't like that I feel like a wet blanket when I respond with a written text. Like phone calls, voice notes are a communication method I'd rather reserve for my innermost circle, like my parents, my grandparents (who definitely don't know how to use them), my partner, or my best friends.

The intimacy of a voice note is exactly why people believe it's going to save us from loneliness and isolation. A recent essay in Time magazine praised the voice note emphatically, citing research from 2021 that found voice — including phone, video chat, and voice chat — "created stronger social bonds when compared to text interactions," and helps facilitate "understanding or connection."

But like everything we access on our smartphones — social media, email, games — it's still a manufactured form of intimacy, engineered to substitute for real intimacy between real humans, and I'm not convinced that it will ever truly make us happy. Shortcuts rarely do.

When it comes to human connection, quality is so much more important than quantity. Dashing off voice notes just because you can, or because it's more convenient for you, or because you just like to hear yourself talk, isn't necessarily going to lead to stronger friendships. But that's not to say a voice note can't be meaningful. The author of that Time essay writes about receiving them from her friends with all sorts of comforting background noises, like kids playing, or "the clatter of kitchen utensils." It's a beautiful sentiment, soaking in the sonic minutiae of our friends' lives, especially as growing older inevitably pulls us in different directions.

And I get that regular in-person connection isn't accessible for those of us who live far away from our loved ones. I've lived on the opposite coast from my family for over a decade, so the majority of our communication happens through a phone screen. But nothing will ever beat sharing physical space with them whenever I'm able.

Endless chatter — though a balm for those lonely or frustrated moments — isn't a sustainable answer to isolation. We can learn to be more selective with it, leaving enough space and emotional energy to support genuine discussion and deep connection. The fear, I think, is that when we finally manage to tune down the chatter, all we'll hear is the howling longing in our chests. But we'll never quiet that howl by picking up our phones. Our phones didn't save us from fascism; they won't save us from isolation. Only we can do that.

Emma Glassman-Hughes (she/her) is the associate editor at PS Balance. In her seven years as a reporter, her beats have spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she's covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and food, climate, and farming for Ambrook Research.