How voice messages are taking over texts on WhatsApp and iMessage
Tired thumbs are finally getting a break as mobile users ditch texts for voice messages
TEXT messages have dominated the way we talk to each other for decades – but they're quickly being replaced.
Bizarrely, people are turning back to the spoken word, with voice messages sent over WhatsApp and iMessage now extremely common.
The first text message was sent just over 25 years ago.
Since then, we've come to rely on chat apps like WhatsApp, which deliver messages over the internet.
And while people still send more than 55billion texts on WhatsApp per day, the number of voice messages sent is booming too.
Roughly 200million voice messages are delivered over WhatsApp every single day.
So what makes voice messaging so popular?
Some argue voice chats can get your emotional meaning across much more accurately.
That's in contrast to texts, which have no tone or emphasis – leaving them open to misinterpretation.
";Voice messages allow us to gauge mood immediately through tone," explained Pandora Sykes in a recent Sunday Times article called The Rise Of The Voice Note.
She called tone a "key signifier in human conversation that has become notably absent in our constantly connected but increasingly mute world".
Voice messages are particularly popular in Asia, probably due to the difficulty of virtually penning Chinese characters.
On China's WeChat messenger app, voice messages make up an enormous 16% of all messages sent.
WeChat users send around 38billion messages per day, so roughly 6billion of those messages are voice – not text.
Wall Street Journal tech boff David Pierce recently wrote an article called "Phone Calls Are Dead. Voice Chat Is The Future", and he's probably not wrong.
Pierce reckons voice chats are so popular because they're "faster than a phone call".
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But, importantly, they're also "warmer and more human than a text message".
"In the swing from calls to texts, we lost the warmth and humanity that made the phone work in the first place," he explained.
"We need a way to preserve our most salient mode of communication but strip away all the cruft."
Do you prefer texting or voice messages? Let us know in the comments!
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