83% of UK adults prefer sending a text message to sending an audio message, while in the United Arab Emirates only 38% do (YouGov, 17-market survey, November 2023). The gap between those two numbers is the whole story of voice messaging: the same feature, on the same apps, is a default habit in one country and a minor irritant in another. In Brazil, 80% of monthly WhatsApp users exchange audio messages (Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, 2024), yet in Britain 66% of mobile users avoid even listening to voice notes in public (Sky Mobile, vendor-commissioned poll, 2025). This roundup looks at the country, age and calls-versus-messaging angle; for how voice notes work as a flirting tool, see our dating app voice note statistics. We aggregated data from YouGov, Ofcom, Bitkom Research, VCIOM, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Spain’s CNMC, Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, the Pew Research Center, WhatsApp, and two peer-reviewed studies.
TL;DR
- 83% of UK adults prefer sending text over audio, versus 38% in the UAE (YouGov, 17-market survey, November 2023)
- Only 15% of UK adults and 10% of US adults use voice notes multiple times per week (YouGov, 2026)
- WhatsApp users send 7 billion voice messages a day on average (Meta, WhatsApp blog 2022)
- 80% of Brazilian monthly WhatsApp users exchange audio messages (Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, March 2024)
- 44% of Russian adults send voice messages, from 65% at ages 25-34 down to 19% at 60 and over (VCIOM, April 2023)
- 53% of Germans aged 16-29 like sending voice messages, versus 28% of those aged 65 and over (Bitkom Research, 2024)
- 24% of UK Gen Z adults send voice notes multiple times a day (Twilio, vendor-commissioned survey, 2026)
- 77% of Brazilian WhatsApp users make more of their voice calls on WhatsApp than through operator minutes (Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, January 2025)
- 74% of UK online adults used WhatsApp on an average day in May 2025, up from 64% a year earlier (Ofcom, Online Nation 2025)
- 63% of Australian adults made a voice call through an app in the 6 months to June 2025 (ACMA, How we communicate 2025)
- 36% of Australians aged 75 and over made a voice call through an app, against 63% of all adults (ACMA, How we communicate 2025)
1. Platform Scale: Where Voice Messages Travel
Voice messaging does not live in a dedicated app. It rides on top of the messaging platform each country already uses, which is why national preference data matters more than global totals. WhatsApp users send 7 billion voice messages a day on average, according to the figure the company published on March 30, 2022 in its Making Voice Messages Better announcement (Meta, WhatsApp blog 2022). WhatsApp has not refreshed that number since, so it is best read as a floor.
The national data shows how deep that pipe now runs. In the UK, daily WhatsApp use jumped 10 percentage points in a single year, and in Brazil audio messages are almost as common as typed text inside the app. Australia’s regulator, the ACMA, finds that app-based voice calling is now a majority behaviour too. The infrastructure for voice is universal; the willingness to use it is not, as section 2 shows.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp voice messages sent per day, worldwide average (as announced March 30, 2022) | 7 billion | Meta, WhatsApp blog ‘Making Voice Messages Better’ 2022 |
| UK online adults reached by WhatsApp in May 2025 | 90% | Ofcom, Online Nation 2025 |
| UK online adults using WhatsApp on an average day: May 2025 vs May 2024 | 74% (36.1 million) vs 64% (30.4 million) | Ofcom, Online Nation 2025 |
| Spanish weekly internet users who use WhatsApp to send messages (second quarter of 2025) | 93.9% | CNMC, Panel de Hogares, October 2025 |
| Spanish weekly internet users who use WhatsApp for video calls (second quarter of 2025) | 68.7% | CNMC, Panel de Hogares, October 2025 |
| Brazilian monthly WhatsApp users who exchange audio messages vs text messages (January 2024, base 2,064) | 80% vs 86% | Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, March 2024 |
| Brazilian monthly WhatsApp users who make voice calls in the app (January 2024) | 76% | Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, March 2024 |
| Australian adults who used an app for messages vs for voice calls (6 months to June 2025) | 77% vs 63% | ACMA, How we communicate 2025 |
Context: the Spanish figures come from the CNMC household panel (CNMC is Spain’s competition and telecom regulator), which surveyed 5,176 households and 8,709 individuals in the second quarter of 2025. The Brazilian audio figure comes from the Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box messaging report, based on 2,112 online interviews in January 2024.
2. Text vs Voice: The Country Divide
The cleanest cross-country comparison is a 17-market text-or-audio survey fielded online in November 2023, with 500 to 2,001 adults per market. Its message is blunt: text wins everywhere, but by very different margins. In the UAE only 38% prefer sending text, less than half the UK’s 83%, and the Gulf market also records the largest share of people who would rather receive audio.
What separates the two camps is not access but social norms. Northern Europe treats a voice note as an imposition on the listener’s time: in the same survey only 2% of Danes prefer to send audio. Southern Europe and Latin America sit in between, with 13% of Mexicans and 13% of Spaniards preferring to send audio. Asia shows a third pattern, ambivalence rather than rejection: 40% of Indian respondents like receiving both formats equally, and in Hong Kong and the UAE that figure reaches 46%. National studies outside the survey point the same way: German smartphone users lean clearly toward text, while Russian smartphone users are more than twice as likely to view voice messages positively as negatively.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Adults across 17 markets who prefer sending text vs audio vs like both equally (November 2023) | 66% vs 7% vs 21% | YouGov, 17-market survey, February 2024 |
| Adults who prefer sending text: UK, Denmark, Sweden | 83%, 80%, 78% | YouGov, 17-market survey, February 2024 |
| Adults who prefer sending text: UAE (lowest of 17 markets) vs Spain (lowest in Europe) | 38% vs 54% | YouGov, 17-market survey, February 2024 |
| Adults who prefer receiving audio messages: UAE, Italy, India | 17%, 10%, 8% | YouGov, 17-market survey, February 2024 |
| German smartphone users who would rather receive text messages than voice messages (n = 773) | 61% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| Russian smartphone users with a positive vs neutral vs negative view of voice messages (April 2023) | 38% vs 41% vs 18% | VCIOM, April 2023 |
Outlier note: in the same Russian poll, negative views of voice messages rise to 29% in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, well above the national 18%. Big-city users appear less tolerant of the format than the rest of the country. Most recent available data: VCIOM, 2023.
3. How Many People Actually Send Voice Notes
Preference surveys say who would choose voice; usage surveys say who actually presses the microphone button. The two tell slightly different stories. In the English-speaking markets voice notes remain a niche habit: only 15% of UK adults and 10% of US adults use them multiple times per week, and in the same two surveys 44% of Britons and 41% of Americans say voice notes do not apply to them at all. In Russia, by contrast, close to half of all adults send voice messages and six in ten receive them.
The gap between sending and receiving is the key structural fact. More people receive voice messages than send them, in every dataset that measures both: a minority of enthusiastic senders reaches a much wider pool of listeners. That asymmetry explains why the format generates so much complaint relative to its user base. Among young Spanish university students, though, voice messaging is close to universal, a reminder that national averages hide intense pockets of use.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Adults who use voice notes multiple times per week: UK (March 2026, n = 2,312) vs US (February 2026, n = 2,442) | 15% vs 10% | YouGov, How Brits and How Americans communicate in 2026 |
| Russian adults who send vs receive voice messages (April 2023, n = 1,600) | 44% vs 61% | VCIOM, April 2023 |
| Russian adults who neither send nor receive voice messages | 24% | VCIOM, April 2023 |
| German smartphone users who like sending vs like receiving voice messages | 41% vs 56% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| Spanish university students aged 18-27 who regularly use voice messages (n = 247) | 90.9% | Cardenas-Rica et al., OBS* Journal 2024 |
| UK mobile users who receive more than 10 voice notes a day (vendor-commissioned, n = 2,000) | 14% | Sky Mobile, May 2025 |
| UK adults who talk more than they type when using technology (vendor-commissioned, n = 2,000, August 2026) | 22% | Twilio, September 2026 |
Context: the Russian Public Opinion Research Center survey was a telephone poll of 1,600 adults aged 18 and over on April 7, 2023, with a margin of error of no more than 2.5%. The US 2026 communication survey defines regular use as multiple times per week. Sky Mobile and Twilio figures come from surveys commissioned by those companies.
4. The Generational Split
Age is the strongest predictor of voice messaging in every country with an age breakdown. In Russia, 65% of 25-34 year-olds send voice messages, against 19% of adults aged 60 and over, and 38% of the oldest group neither send nor receive them. Germany shows the same slope for liking the format: enthusiasm for sending voice messages roughly halves between people in their twenties and people over 65.
The more interesting finding is where the peak sits. It is not the youngest adults but those in their late twenties and thirties: in Russia the 25-34 group edges out 18-24 year-olds, and in Germany people aged 30-49 are the most likely to enjoy receiving voice messages. Young adults are also not uniformly pro-voice: in a vendor-commissioned UK poll, more than half of 18-24 year-olds would still rather pick up the phone than record a voice note, although that preference for calls grows with age. The generational line is about comfort with asynchronous audio, not about abandoning live conversation.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Russians who send voice messages: ages 18-24 vs 25-34 vs 60 and over | 63% vs 65% vs 19% | VCIOM, April 2023 |
| Russians aged 60 and over who neither send nor receive voice messages | 38% | VCIOM, April 2023 |
| Germans who like sending voice messages: ages 16-29 vs 65 and over | 53% vs 28% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| Germans who like receiving voice messages: ages 30-49 vs 65 and over | 62% vs 44% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| UK adults who send voice notes multiple times a day: Gen Z vs Millennials vs Gen X (vendor-commissioned) | 24% vs 13% vs 5% | Twilio, September 2026 |
| UK mobile users who prefer phoning to recording a voice note: ages 18-24 vs 45-54 vs 65 and over (vendor-commissioned) | 56% vs 65% vs 69% | Sky Mobile, May 2025 |
| Australians aged 75 and over who used an app for messages vs voice calls vs video calls | 48% vs 36% vs 32% | ACMA, How we communicate 2025 |
Context: the Bitkom survey was a telephone poll of 1,005 people aged 16 and over in Germany, 773 of them smartphone users, carried out in weeks 4 to 7 of 2024. The Twilio figures come from the company’s press release of September 17, 2026.
5. Phone Calls vs Messaging
The voice note sits between two older formats, the live phone call and the typed message, and the data shows the typed message winning the larger share of daily contact. Messaging has replaced most phone calls for 44% of UK adults and 37% of US adults, and in the same 2026 surveys 89% of Britons and 85% of Americans message regularly, against 50% and 58% who make regular voice calls. Calls have not vanished; they have moved onto messaging apps, as Brazil shows.
Russia is the counterexample: asked directly, 41% of adults prefer calls and only 15% prefer messenger messages, with 43% saying it makes no difference. In Brazil, the call is alive but has changed carrier: most WhatsApp users place more calls through the app than through operator minutes, while operator SMS has become almost irrelevant to senders. Young Spaniards still rank the live call as the most useful channel for important news. For the workplace version of this shift, see our asynchronous video messaging statistics.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Adults for whom messaging has replaced most phone calls: UK (March 2026) vs US (February 2026) | 44% vs 37% | YouGov, How Brits and How Americans communicate in 2026 |
| Russian adults who prefer phone calls vs messenger messages vs say it makes no difference (April 2023) | 41% vs 15% vs 43% | VCIOM, April 2023 |
| Brazilian WhatsApp users who make more of their voice calls on WhatsApp than through operator minutes (January 2025, n = 2,099) | 77% | Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, via Teletime, February 2025 |
| Brazilian smartphone users who never or almost never send operator SMS (January 2025) | 72% (30% never, 42% almost never) | Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, via Teletime, March 2025 |
| Australian adults who used a mobile phone for calls vs for SMS (6 months to June 2025) | 98% vs 96% | ACMA, How we communicate 2025 |
| Spanish students’ usefulness score for sharing important news: phone call vs voice message vs text (scale of 1 to 5) | 4.15 vs 3.41 vs 3.26 | Cardenas-Rica et al., OBS* Journal 2024 |
| US teens who name phone calls vs texting among their top 3 ways to talk with their best friend (2015) | 69% vs 80% | Pew Research Center, 2015 |
Context: the Brazilian figures are from the January 2025 edition of the Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box survey as reported by Teletime. The Pew teen data is old: Most recent available data: Pew Research Center, 2015. It is included only as a historical anchor for the call-versus-text balance among teens.
6. Friction, Context and the Transcription Fix
Why do so many people who own the feature avoid it? The answers are remarkably consistent across countries: length, timing and context. 75% of German smartphone users say long voice messages annoy them, and 44% admit they usually answer voice messages later than texts. In the Russian poll cited in section 3, the most cited drawback is simply not always being able to listen, and in a vendor-commissioned UK poll two in three mobile users avoid playing voice notes in public. A voice note asks the listener for headphones, privacy and a minute of undivided attention, three things a text never needs. Part of the reluctance on the sending side is also personal: many people dislike hearing their own recorded voice, a pattern covered in our own-voice recording statistics.
Context changes the answer too. A peer-reviewed study of 485 Saudi WhatsApp users found voice peaking at 41.44% for sharing good news while text dominated condolences at 77.73%. Transcription is the industry’s attempt to dissolve the listening problem: WhatsApp’s voice message transcripts turn a voice note into text on the device, and German demand for AI summaries suggests a sizeable share of listeners would rather read than listen. The same logic is spreading to longer audio, as our podcast transcript adoption statistics show.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| German smartphone users annoyed by long voice messages: all vs ages 16-29 | 75% vs 63% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| German smartphone users who enjoy voice messages only up to 1 minute long (average tolerance: 1.5 minutes) | 45% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| German smartphone users who would use an AI feature that summarises voice messages in bullet points | 30% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| Russian adults who name ‘not always able to listen’ as the main drawback of voice messages (open question) | 14% | VCIOM, April 2023 |
| UK mobile users who avoid listening to voice notes in public (vendor-commissioned) | 66% | Sky Mobile, May 2025 |
| UK mobile users who listen to voice notes at double speed (vendor-commissioned) | 44% | Sky Mobile, May 2025 |
| Saudi WhatsApp users choosing a voice message to share good news vs a text message to offer condolences (n = 485) | 41.44% vs 77.73% | Alsakaker, Journal of Language Teaching and Research 2025 |
| WhatsApp voice message transcripts: announcement date and processing | November 21, 2024, generated on the device | WhatsApp blog, 2024 |
Context: the Saudi study by Alsakaker asked 485 Saudi native Arabic speakers (299 men, 186 women) to choose a mode for 12 social scenarios. The Spanish OBS* study collected its data from February to April 2023 among university students in Seville.
Summary: Voice Message vs Text Message Preference by Country by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Adults who prefer sending text: UK vs UAE (November 2023) | 83% vs 38% | YouGov, 17-market survey, February 2024 |
| Adults for whom messaging has replaced most phone calls: UK vs US | 44% vs 37% | YouGov, 2026 |
| WhatsApp voice messages sent per day, worldwide average | 7 billion | Meta, WhatsApp blog 2022 |
| UK online adults using WhatsApp on an average day, May 2025 | 74% | Ofcom, Online Nation 2025 |
| Spanish weekly internet users who message on WhatsApp | 93.9% | CNMC, October 2025 |
| Brazilian monthly WhatsApp users who exchange audio messages | 80% | Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, March 2024 |
| Brazilian WhatsApp users who make more voice calls on WhatsApp than via operator minutes | 77% | Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box, January 2025 |
| Australian adults who made voice calls through an app | 63% | ACMA, How we communicate 2025 |
| Russians who send voice messages: all adults vs ages 25-34 vs 60 and over | 44% vs 65% vs 19% | VCIOM, April 2023 |
| Germans who like sending voice messages: ages 16-29 vs 65 and over | 53% vs 28% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| German smartphone users annoyed by long voice messages | 75% | Bitkom Research, March 2024 |
| UK Gen Z adults who send voice notes multiple times a day (vendor-commissioned) | 24% | Twilio, September 2026 |
| UK 18-24 year-olds who prefer phoning to recording a voice note (vendor-commissioned) | 56% | Sky Mobile, May 2025 |
| Spanish university students who regularly use voice messages | 90.9% | Cardenas-Rica et al., OBS* Journal 2024 |
| Saudi WhatsApp users choosing voice to share good news | 41.44% | Alsakaker, JLTR 2025 |
| Australians aged 75 and over who made voice calls through an app | 36% | ACMA, How we communicate 2025 |
| US teens naming phone calls among top 3 ways to reach their best friend (2015) | 69% | Pew Research Center, 2015 |
Methodology and Sources
- YouGov: 17-market survey on audio vs text messages (online, November 2023, 500 to 2,001 adults per market, published February 9, 2024); How Americans communicate in 2026 (2,442 US adults, February 3 to 5, 2026); How Brits communicate in 2026 (2,312 GB adults, March 25 to 26, 2026).
- Meta / WhatsApp: Making Voice Messages Better (March 30, 2022) and Introducing Voice Message Transcripts (November 21, 2024).
- Ofcom: Online Nation 2025 (published December 10, 2025; WhatsApp reach measured in May 2025).
- CNMC: Panel de Hogares, uses of internet and OTT services (published October 31, 2025; 5,176 households and 8,709 individuals, second quarter of 2025).
- Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box: Mensageria no Brasil, March 2024 (2,112 online interviews, January 10 to 23, 2024) and the January 2025 edition as reported by Teletime on WhatsApp calls and Teletime on SMS (2,099 interviews, January 15 to 30, 2025).
- ACMA: How we communicate, executive summary and key findings (Australian adults, 6 months to June 2025, published February 2026).
- Bitkom Research: Mehrheit erhaelt gerne Sprachnachrichten (press release of March 27, 2024; telephone survey of 1,005 people aged 16 and over, 773 smartphone users).
- VCIOM: Voice messages: why not? (published April 18, 2023; telephone survey of 1,600 adults on April 7, 2023).
- Cardenas-Rica, Sequera-Diaz and Martin-Ramallal: Generacion Mute, a study on sending and receiving audio on WhatsApp, OBS* Journal, vol. 18, no. 3, 2024 (n = 247 Spanish university students aged 18-27).
- Alsakaker: Socio-Pragmatic Communication Preferences Among Saudi WhatsApp Users: Text Messages vs. Voice Messages, Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 16, no. 3, May 2025 (n = 485).
- Twilio: press release of September 17, 2026 (vendor-commissioned survey of 2,000 UK adults, August 2026).
- Sky Mobile: VOICE-NO! Brits call time on long voice notes (vendor-commissioned poll of 2,000 mobile phone users, May 21, 2025).
- Pew Research Center: For teens, phone calls are reserved for closer relationships (August 17, 2015).
- Data watch: the 7 billion WhatsApp figure dates from 2022 and has not been updated by the company. The Russian data (April 2023) and the Pew teen data (2015) are older than three years and flagged as most recent available. Some secondary roundups describe the UAE’s 38% as a preference for audio; in the source it is the share preferring to send text, while the UAE’s audio-receiving preference is 17%. Usage surveys are not directly comparable: YouGov measures use multiple times per week among all adults, Bitkom measures liking among smartphone users, VCIOM measures any use among adults, and the Brazilian survey measures feature use among monthly WhatsApp users. The two studies of Spanish students and Saudi users are not nationally representative. Sky Mobile and Twilio figures are vendor-commissioned and do not name an independent fieldwork agency. Ofcom’s Online Nation 2025 text was read through a public copy of the report PDF because ofcom.org.uk blocked automated access.
Last updated: November 8, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly, and the next refresh is expected when Ofcom publishes Online Nation 2026.