Have a read of Tameside Radio presenter Alex B Cann's latest words of wisdom.

Thinking back to growing up in the 80s and early 90s, keeping in touch revolved around making a landline call to your friend's parents, and hearing them holler "phone!" several times up the stairs until receiving a grunted response. Perhaps they were busy playing Pacman or Tetris, or watching the latest VHS from Blockbuster. Be kind, rewind!

It was a time before social media, when trolls resided under bridges and not inside your computer, and the only way of blocking a nuisance caller was by leaving the phone off the hook. Nobody 'took to Twitter' (an irksome phrase if ever I heard one), and ranted about a TV or radio programme they didn't like. They would have to put pen to paper, and write in. Or perhaps call up on the landline, like Elliott did during that infamous Five Star clip on Going Live ("who are you so *expletive* was his insightful question). The only alternative was the fax machine, which most likely had a paper jam anyway.

I'm not planning on arguing that we should return to these times, by the way. We've got high inflation and strikes, so that's quite enough nods to past decades. I think social media is brilliant in many ways, but it has a myriad of problems that haven't been properly addressed. Women in particular need to feel safe online, and that just isn't the case right now. Mob rule is the name of the game on Twitter, and anonymous accounts pop up like a sinister game of whack-a-mole as soon as you've blocked one.

If you want to contact your friends now, you can send an E-mail, an old-fashioned text message (although who does that nowadays?!), actually call them up (perish the thought!), or do what I do 95% of the time...send a WhatsApp. Now owned by Meta, this platform allows encrypted end-to-end communication, and includes the facility to send a voice note. Now, as someone who speaks on the radio for a living, I love sending voice notes. It feels a lot easier sometimes than typing a lengthy missive, to be honest.

Having said that, it definitely divides the room. Some see it as lazy, irritating, or simply unnecessary, when you could just make a call or type what you want to say. My counter argument to this is you can send a voice note when you're out walking in the park, running a bath, making a cup of Yorkshire Tea, or doing pretty much any other everyday thing.

It's said that millenials despise voicemails, but during the pandemic, they drove an exponential rise in the number of WhatsApp voice notes being sent. There's no pressure to respond immediately, you can listen at your leisure, and i definitely find them less demanding on your time than a long text message. Quick messages fired off over WhatsApp can also be misread, much as a one line E-mail can, whereas tone of voice is everything in a voice note. 

I do think perhaps there needs to be a duration limit of two minutes. Basically, the time it takes the kettle to boil. Any more places unreasonable demands on the recipient's time, and we're all time poor these days. Hopefully, the sound of your voice might cheer a friend up, and as long as you've roughly thought about what you're going to say, a minute or two can contain information it would take ages to type out.

Perhaps for next week's column, I could send this newspaper's editor my words on a voice note, and ask him to transcribe them? I might ask him on a voice note after I finish writing this.

One thing I've noticed too...I used to get a load of 'pocket dial' calls, as someone whose name is first in many lists of contacts. I haven't had one of those for donkey's years. Presumably because we're all too busy on WhatsApp, or leaving the phone off the hook.

I did resolve during the first lockdown to revive the art of sending letters through the post, but sadly never got round to that, much like the "guilt library" I have in my home studio (all the books I bought with great intentions during the pandemic). In short, I welcome voice notes from friends. It says to me that someone is thinking about me, and wants to share a bit of their day, and that is surely a good thing in an ever turbulent world.

You can listen to Alex every weekday from 7am to 11am and on the 'Super Scoreboard' show on Saturdays from 3pm to 7pm, on Tameside Radio 103.6FM. 

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