While they shouldn’t replace conversations entirely – they’re a new form of Post It note, really – I send gossipy voice notes to friends and sometimes to people I have intimate or romantic connections with. When I ask a friend from the latter category how he feels about our back-and- forth voice notes, he agrees that there is something intimate about them.

“I now have a genuine fondness for voice stuff after resenting the idea of it. I like the idea of  a captive audience,” he told me. “I like being able to flirt with someone in a focused way that also doesn’t feel invasive like an IRL date might. The currency of texting and talking has flipped. I feel much less comfortable rambling on most voice notes and phone calls than I do in text.”

I tell him voice notes can make me nervous.

“That’s sweet!” he says. “We realise the stakes are higher when we go from texting to voice. There’s so much text static in our lives that only 50% of whatever I text is really seen. A voice note is like you’ve got to tear that letter open.”

For Marar, much of this behaviour is driven by one thing: a desire for human closeness. “We have a hunger to connect with people, and therefore a hunger to reveal ourselves,” he says. “That’s what people are doing online – even if they don’t always get the result they expected.”

This hunger will ultimately keep human intimacy alive – in whatever form it takes as we move forward together.

The surprising impact your mobile phone is having on your relationships