Cambodians would much rather send voice notes instead of messages. Because of this, almost all their communication is in the form of voice notes rather than texting. And Facebook Messenger is the most affected platform.

Cambodia's approximate 12,931,000 Facebook users generate 50% of all Facebook Messenger global voice traffic. Here is why.

Messenger Can't Handle Khmer

Cambodians use Facebook like a voicemail service, rather than a text messaging service. This is not Facebook's fault. Rather, it has more to do with the complexity of Cambodia's Khmer language.

Khmer has 74 characters, the largest in the world. Compare this to English which has 26 letters. As a result of the large number of characters in Khmer's alphabet, it is impossible for a standard keyboard to fit all of them in.

The solution is to make each keyboard key represent two different characters, which means one needs to constantly switch between two keyboard layers in order to type the average sentence.

In addition, if the recipient's computer lacks fonts that match the sender's, they won't be able to read the message. Also, most Cambodians access the internet via smartphone which has a much smaller screen. This makes it nearly impossible to type out a coherent message in Khmer, let alone format that text in Messenger.

For the average Cambodian, it just makes sense to avoid all this hassle by sending a voice note. Related: How to Block and Unblock a User on Messenger

Voice Messaging Drawbacks on Messenger

There are some drawbacks associated with voice notes. First, you can't search voice notes. It would take enormous amounts of scrolling, and a really sharp memory, to retrieve an old message.

There's also the fact that a voice note is easy to edit and manipulate, opening up users to various kinds of abuse or blackmail. A manipulated voice note is not as easy to detect as a manipulated video. Thus, a user's conversations can be sliced and diced to make it sound as if they said something they would never otherwise say.

There is also a fear that young Cambodians will lose the ability to use the written word to communicate in Khmer. The youth don't seem to mind at all though. In just two years, Facebook has added nearly three million users in Cambodia.

Thus, Facebook continues to be the most popular social media platform and those Facebook Messenger voice notes Cambodia's preferred communication tool. Cambodians also prefer using voice notes in other popular platforms such as LINE, WhatsApp, and Telegram.