Luckily no friends of mine are using voice messages in 1-1 chats with me. I never listen to those messages in group chats.
I won't use a voice only or video only social network exactly for the same reason. Text and pictures are ok because they are quick to skim through.
Apply it in the context of social interaction, and you can immediately see that social networks are making people more antisocial. But don't worry, someone here will come and give you numerous studies citing why that isn't the case.
Anecdotally, though, you know this is true. You probably know of that old autistic person who was never diagnosed and somehow managed to live a higher quality life than the current diagnosed generation. You probably know of elders who actually had a much higher quality of life after they lost mobility because, you know, people actually stopped by to talk to them occasionally. You probably know of a cheery, older handicapped person who seemed to have had nothing going for them other than people who just genuinely cared about them - probably because the time others spent with them was not optimized for self-actualization.
This is popular in Buenos Aires as well.
These days, text based content is very low on "value" (thus why we scroll past many text heavy things on current social media) but video is very high on "barrier to entry" as most people have to record quite a few times, make sure they look good, etc.
My goal was to use audio to make it quick to get ideas/stories up there, but that people would see them as higher value (for example, I can hear the southern twang from some of my old college friends)
So I'd personally fight the word "novelty" but I might be a bit biased ;)
AFAICT, the fact that it's not visually skimmable seems to be the reason audio is far behind.
I don't know if this does it or the author has looked into the concept. Just jumped out at me when I read your comment as I almost never listen to radio but was skimming it past, two days just to see what caught my attention.