What I find interesting is that the article seems to imply that wearing earbuds to isolate is somewhat "unnatural" (for lack of a better term).
However it does not take into account that the kind of social interaction where people wear earbuds (i.e. loud and busy environments with many strangers, often physically closer than comfortable) is unnatural to begin with.
For me, isolating myself acoustically is a way to normalize such environments back to a more "natural" setting.
Tangentially related, but it's interesting to use airpods in hyper-busy train stations in Japan like Shinjuku station, where you have a huge mass of people, and a large majority of people using bluetooth earbuds of some sort. A train rolls up and the sheer amount of 2.4GHz traffic can jam your own audio for a bit. It's an interesting stress test of radio interference.
I don't remember any time in my life where it ever felt normal to me to randomly talk to strangers. I went to London when I was a teenager and was made uncomfortable by how chatty the cab drivers were. Later, I worked at a startup and my boss was preternaturally gifted at chatting up strangers, which he did habitually in every setting we were in when we traveled; on the plane, on the bus from the airport, &c. I remember feeling like he was a freak of nature.
And I'm not an introvert!
All of this long predates Airpods.
I think this is a cultural difference, not a technological shift.
I’ve strange news from the business world. That ability to talk to strangers and be conversational with various topics is actually making him a rather successful boss/business-person. Remember, not just talking, but the far better one is the ability to listen, and take genuine curiosity in the other person’s stories.
I learned, and am still learning, to start with very subtle conversations in contextual proximity to the person without shocking/surprising them. And then, I mostly try to listen more and try to guide them to talk more. You will be surprised at how many a lot are eager to talk to someone, if they are being listented to.
Yes, I experienced this a number of times in my life.
Growing up in a small Swiss village I wasn’t born in, I had to learn that you basically greeted everybody you passed in the road, under the assumption that you knew them or were supposed to know them (more conversations were not needed).
Moving to a large Swiss village, I had to learn that saying hi to random strangers was considered weird at best.
First time I visited Southern California, I was very uncomfortable with strangers striking up random conversations. Later in the trip in San Franciso, I felt that the slightly toned down form of this habit was more comfortable for me.
Moving back to Switzerland after having lived in CA for a few years, I had to relearn old habits.
Talking to strangers is a skill. You can practice it! I've made a point of trying to practice, albeit halfheartedly, and even though it's difficult for me, because I like it when other people try to talk to me.
Earbuds stop this practice dead in its tracks. You can't deny that.
Talking to strangers is a skill. You can practice it! I've made a point of trying to practice, albeit halfheartedly, and even though it's difficult for me, because I like it when other people try to talk to me.
It is definitely something one can learn. I also like it very much. Most people are just very nice and love chatting a bit as well (just be respectful of their time and know when to bow out).
There are also other functions that purely having a good time. E.g. when you are in a train with reserved seats, striking op a conversation is also a good way of gauging whether it's ok to leave your bags when you leave your seat to grab a drink or some food. Also, people feel more responsible looking after your stuff once you have socialized a bit.
For me it's not super-difficult. I came from a small village where it is normal to greet people and maybe chat, even if you don't know them.
Agree with the first part, very important!
Not the second, however.
I joined my local fitness gym some months ago and use it to connect to people in the small town I moved to.
Almost every time I'm there I manage to chat to someone briefly, and 50% of them have earpods in.
Most of them now look up and greet me when we pass and multiple have up to me on other days to chat afterwards.
It's a skill and part of that skill is being able to give people an out of the chat if they don't feel for it, not interrupting at a bad time (mid set in a gym setting).
My starter is usually a quick question with a "thank you so much, I'm new here" and if they reach for earpods to put back as they say you welcome, perfect you don't keep going.
For the ones who want to chat keep them off and respond or ask something in return.
So headphones/earpods can be a barrier but for me it's a useful barrier and a clear signal, which helps both parties.
I just pretend I haven't noticed they have earbuds in and start talking to them. Virtually everyone seems happy to have an interaction, I get the feeling people are a bit starved for random friendly contact.
Why would you initiate talk with me in the first place, when we're in a situation where I have not explicitly chosen contact with you? (say on a train)
Also reading something would be a clear signal (also to me) that a person doesn't want to get disturbed.
When I have to tell you that I don't want to talk, you have already disturbed me. So, talking the cues here clearly is on you, not on me.
My take, is that this effect has removed a lot of the micro communications we make - not necessarily random conversations. It’s taken away random moments that may trigger a short small conversation with strangers.
In part it’s taking away the shared experience in public and making it “my” experience.
Completely anecdotal story, me and a friend had completely different experiences going to Portugal. We're both Brazilians so language, food, culture aren't barriers, he's very talkative and would joke and try to interact with random people in the street or restaurants. He had a terrible experience, hated the country, vowed to never come back, said he wasn't welcomed anywhere, people were rude, even waitresses.
I'm more of a "talk when talk is needed" person but still social. i don't really interact with strangers in the street and I assume business social interactions (like restaurants) are just that, business, so I'm polite but i'm not going to crack a joke with someone i've never seen before and will likely never see again. My experience was the complete opposite, loved Portugal, would easily move there if salaries weren't shit, people were nice, i felt welcomed anywhere i went, might have been the only place outside of Brazil i have really felt at home.
I think its important to NOT BE RUDE with the random people you meet in the street but I also see no reason so strike a conversation with them. If I happen to see something that picks up my interest, like a band shirt, book i like or something like that, i might bring it up if we're going to stay in the same place for long, but starting a conversation out of nowhere just isn't a thing for me.
Sure, but when the only reason I had those random moments with strangers were because they wanted them, and refusing to engage is considered "rude", I'd argue that it already was just someone else's "my" experience before, just "shared" because of societal peer pressure. What changed is that now I have a way to actually assert my boundaries without being the rude one.
I think it's a mistake to conflate passive signaling with asserting oneself, and whether you like the interaction you might have otherwise had or not (as long as it's not clearly harassment or something) it would be rude to ignore people in public whether that rudeness is delegated to technology or not. It's just another way of turning up one's nose, and it's a gross way to operate imo. If you don't like the people you'd interact with, it seems to me like it should be a personal goal to find a place to work or live that's more palatable from that perspective. If you go about life preferring to pre-emptively refuse interaction with people passively, I'm not aware of a better word than "rude".
Whether grocery shopping or an endurance running event (5K+) those with any kind of headphones in are simply less aware of the people trying to get around them.
As someone from Chicago (actual Chicago, south side, not the suburbs), randomly talking to strangers is what we do.
We're talking to strangers at the bus stop, at the grocery check out, or just wherever. It's just phatic conversation, nothing needs to come of it. Chicagoans aren't just friendly, they actually love the art of the conversation -- every conversation is a chance to put in the reps.
But the minute you step into the suburbs, this habit disappears.
I grew up on the south side and lived for years in Lakeview; we moved back from Ann Arbor to Oak Park, much later, the only time I've lived "in the suburbs", and Oak Park is more urban than Beverly or Jeff Park are. And then, of course, even after we moved to Oak Park, I still worked in the city every day.
No, this doesn't track my experience of Chicago at all.
It's a class thing more than a geography thing. Culturally working-class urban Americans are chatty in almost every American city, save the most recently-urbanized ones (like PHX -- and even there there Latinos are chatty even if whitey ain't...)
> But the minute you step into the suburbs, this habit disappears.
This is exactly the feeling I get in the suburbs of most places, and I think the nature of car-centric suburbs serves as a decent analogy for the Airpodsification of otherwise more urban areas. Suburbanites want their palace that they can tightly control, and it rarely matters where it is as long as they can drive to anywhere they need to go, but they don't really like people and it feels like a deeply antisocial liminal space. There's rarely any specific reason anyone would want to be there, and even if they did, they'd have to drive, and if they chose not to, people there use their cars as tools for avoiding interactions with strangers. You wake up, get in your motorized comfort bubble / killing machine, and then drive from point A to B and then back to Point A. If you wanted to go hangout, oftentimes the act of driving that you've chosen sucks all that time away anyway. Drivers then get dogs so they have some sort of excuse to interact with other people who have dogs, or kids or whatever.
Then if they're lucky, they wake up one day and realize they don't see any real friends that aren't their immediate neighbors anymore, and they've lost the ability to understand how to meet people outside of work. Their old friends didn't come out for that bbq because it's dead boring and the bbq master is the only one that doesn't have a commute back. The bar in their basement sits empty because it turns out people actually want to go to the pub instead of sitting in the basement. The novelty was never the drinking itself, but the feeling of coming together in the same space and place as other people hanging out having a good time.
As someone who is often pretty introverted, I feel like wireless earbuds just give me a way to act like I already wanted to with less friction. I pretty rarely want to talk to random strangers, not because I have anything against them, but because I just find it takes a lot of energy for me to do so (probably not in small part from having to replicate a lot of what comes naturally from others in terms of social signal reading with extra effort). People seem to be a lot less likely to randomly initiate conversations with me when I'm out in public with my earbuds on, and that saves me from having to decide between feeling even more tired after going out or the awkwardness of trying to cut off the conversation short to avoid spending energy on it.
My mom was one of those people that talked to people everywhere we went and seemed to know someone everywhere too. As a very shy kid I was constantly mortified but I had the startling realisation several years back that I'm that person now just starting conversations all over the place. Oddly enough seeing your comment I think the change happened when I moved to England in my late teens but I didn't recognise it until my 30s. I do wear my airpods a lot on walks these days but I always silence them as I approach people and regularly take them out if it seems like a conversation is about to start.
> I don't remember any time in my life where it ever felt normal to me to randomly talk to strangers
> And I'm not an introvert!
See that's interesting, because I *am* an introvert, but I'm quite happy to sit and talk to strangers. I don't mind it at all.
One of the few cultural similarities that I feel like London has with Scotland (where I live) is that you can just talk to people. People will talk. If you go to Glasgow and you ask for directions, chances are that the person you ask will walk with you to where you're going and point out good places to eat and interesting things to see along the way. Boston people have just learned this in a big way.
My son is even more so, and at not-quite-six he already appears to know most of the people in the town of 14,000 people where we live, how their farms are doing, how are the cows, what weight of potatoes are they getting per hectare, what prices they're getting at market, how they're getting on with that gearbox problem with the van. It takes about an hour to walk the mile or so back from school because he's got to talk to all the old guys and ask how they're doing.
Social Networking at its finest. I suspect he won't be stuck for a job when he's older.
That's strange to me that you mention London as being similar to Glasgow. I've not had the chance to visit either, but my go-to on this topic has always been this faux news story on the Mash Report:
Yeah the most unbelievable part of this is people randomly chatting in London.
I live in London, and I remember flying to Ireland at some point, and I was seated next to an Irish lady returning home from holiday who sparked up a conversation.
My initial reaction was "Why the fuck are you talking to me?" because I had lived in London so long I was thrown off by a random person sparking conversation. But turns out she was just a lovely Irish lady flying from from holiday
I definitely think it's generational. Every person I know over 50 could talk to a brick wall for hours. The people I know 30-40 it's a struggle for at least half of them. Under 30 and it gets much worse.
Even the older introverted people I know, who I would characterise as quiet, would find it really rude to get in a taxi and not chat to the driver for the duration of the journey.
With people doing their entire careers remotely now I can only see this shift happening faster and more intensely. Small talk is a skill like any other and I think it's a sad skill to lose on a societal level. And I say this as a serious introvert that doesn't love to make small talk. Nine times out of ten, when I do make the effort to e.g. talk to a taxi driver I come away happier.
as someone who enjoys talking to strangers, while it is less common in some countries like China, and big cities in most countries, people tend to react mostly the same.
Agreed. These people seem to be panicking that our precious society is suffering because of choices people are making for themselves when that’s just what society is. If they benefit from talking to more people, go ahead and enjoy the benefits. They aren’t owed anything.
I’ll talk to strangers when it makes me feel good. But most of the time I try avoid inviting weirdos to complain about minorities or marginalized people from someone who has driven away anyone close to them.
> Agreed. These people seem to be panicking that our precious society is suffering because of choices people are making for themselves when that’s just what society is. If they benefit from talking to more people, go ahead and enjoy the benefits. They aren’t owed anything.
I hope you don't complain when people use social media or have LLM as their daddy to cope then :)
>> I try avoid inviting weirdos to complain about minorities or marginalized people from someone who has driven away anyone close to them.
I would suggest that it's your avoidance of talking to strangers that makes you think this is how a lot of them think. And it kind of proves the point that society can suffer because of it. If you went out tomorrow and talked to 100 random strangers for 10mins I'd be surprised if any of them complained about minorities.
It's one thing to isolate against strangers in a subway. It's another thing to be goddamn oblivious in a shared space like a grocery store--to take a random (not) example. It's getting to the point that I have to body up to people to get them to take notice that they're blocking a half dozen of us.
I also do agree with the comment that airpods do seem to get in the way of the most basic of social etiquette. Simple "please" and "thank you" are increasingly rare since you can't recognize the cues when your ears are full of something else.
> > They keep them in while ordering and paying for things in stores and supermarkets.
> As a GenYer I find this rude and I'll take them out any time I interact with someone.
I don't take my headphones off while paying for things in a supermarket - because you aren't really expected to talk or listen in this scenario, and the cashier doesn't want to interact with you either. But for anything more involved, like ordering something in a coffeeshop - yeah, absolutely.
>> As a GenYer I find this rude and I'll take them out any time I interact with someone.
Interesting point. Airpods actually work great as hearing aids and I personally use that in loud environments, but I find myself cringing when I do because exactly of what you say. So maybe normalizing their use even when interacting is fine? Still, I can't shake off the idea that I'm not fully connected with you if I'm talking to you and I'm wearing something in my ears...
Yeah, to me personally it just seems like treating the other person (e.g. a cashier or waiter) like a tool or utility rather than a human being. Even if your music is paused (which they can't know)
In a really big and busy city it's emotionally exhausting and not reasonable to have an interaction with everyone near you. The only way a lot of people can tolerate being packed into busy public transit systems on a daily basis is to intentionally ignore each other to a certain degree.
It's essentially the same unspoken etiquette rule as what you're socially expected to do if riding a crowded elevator.
Go commute by NYC subway 10 times a week, M-F especially during peak tourist season and you'll understand.
I intentionally behave completely different if I'm in a small town of 3000 people or walking down the street, shopping, riding transit in a large city.
because it has other people on it? personally I find that sitting down and getting passively carried near to my destination is way less stressful than paying attention to the road that whole time - not to mention finding parking. You don't end up exactly at your destination, but a little bit of walking is good for you.
Assuming you live in a locale with a reasonably efficient system. I've heard some horror stories about north american public transport. Other countries tend to do much better with timetables and routes.
I've never caught a train nor a bus in my life and intend to never do so. I value my privacy and don't want to get stabbed or sit on a chair where someone has pissed all over.
Am European, at least in the big cities, public transport is mostly not worth using unless you are too poor to afford better options.
Too crowded, too hot, there’s a decent chance of arriving at your destination drenched in sweat. Not to mention how absolutely gross the people sitting next to you will often be.
I’ll happily take a few parking fines every day rather than getting in the tube.
It really depends, I would much rather travel by NYC subway or Vancouver SkyTrain or Seattle light rail if my origin and destination are within walking distance. It's the least horrible option in many cases. Good luck to anyone's stress level and pocketbook trying to commute by car in much of NYC and pay $550 a month for parking.
Right, I could have written that much more pessimistically with 850/mo parking, insurance, congestion charges 5 days a week x 2, cost of car insurance, maintenance, fuel, cost of the car itself, etc.
I remember in the 70s and 80s people on buses and subways reading magazines and newspapers. The idea that electronic devices have ushered in some age where humans want to interact with each other less is a myth I think.
There seems to be an overall, “I’m just now aware of this phenomenon, technology must be to blame” when the phenomenon has stayed constant and the tech has shifted under it.
The other related phenomenon is "I dont believe culture and society can change, so I pick something I am vaguely aware of existing in the past. The people who are old enough to be there know the comparison makes no sense, but it allow me to stop the discussion about change".
Like, there was some reading of newspapers and magazines, but not that much. They were large, you know. Most people stared silently out of the window. Multiple people reading newspapers on the bus would be rare occurrence. And it was NOT noisy unlike tiktok video.
I don't think that's it. I think highly anti-social behavior is often deliberate, looking for someone to challenge you. An exertion of power. That's why pretty much everyone learns to ignore the behavior and not say anything.
If you can't or won't illustrate why the two are similar, avoid making the analogy. It just invites a fork in the conversation where people are going to argue "actually it's like a homeless guy taking a shit in my glove box," and other spurious diversions.
Coincidentally, the latter increases the number of the former. Most people are going to avoid confrontation and instead opt for their personal noise cancelation.
> Heavy headphone use makes people feel lonelier, the survey found.
Correlation for sure, I’m less sure about causation though. It seems equally likely to me that other factors are driving increased social anxiety/isolation which in turn drives people to wear headphones to avoid social interactions.
I'll chuck autism and overstimulation in there too. There's a reason that there's the stereotype of the autist wearing their noise-cancelling headphones.
> They keep them in while ordering and paying for things in stores and supermarkets.
This hit me. I often use headphones during chores, including going grocery shopping. I love human interaction, but not while pickings things into my shopping basket. For years I'd also leave them in when paying (audio paused, of course). It took a cashier tell me I was being rude before I realized. She was absolutely right, of course. I do make an effort to visibly remove my headphones when expecting human interaction now. A big thanks to that cashier, and my apologies!
The noise levels everywhere in our cities overwhelms me. The constant chatter of people all around, e.g., a loud conversation in close proximity, people blasting some TikTok garbage on the train, or someone approaching me trying to sell me something when I'm simply walking - I'd rather avoid all of this.
I'm usually playing dark noise on noise cancelling earphones most of the time, and that helps me tune out the constant, stress inducing bombardment of unwelcome auditory inputs.
The thought of intentionally deafening myself to the outside world, even partially, is unnerving, because I can't stand the thought of nerfing my own situational awareness to that degree. Especially in fast-paced environments, like city streets, where sounds can carry such important signal.
Even watching someone else walk around a city with headphones/earbuds in is something that makes me uncomfortable by proxy. It's like someone deciding that walking around with beer goggles is a good idea
I live in cities, and I usually walk around 15-20k steps every day for the last decade in cities. I listen to music or podcasts in my earbuds, and often I read stuff on chat on my phone as I walk. I have never run into anything, and never had any issue bumping into people or cyclists. It's perfectly possible for some people to navigate just fine in their environment while dealing with multiple stimuli, and in fact that's exactly why I love walking so much more than sitting. Having earbuds or using my phone at the same time for me is certainly nothing like being intoxicated while walking. It's important to not project one's experience as how it must also be for everyone else.
I swear my tinnitus is a result of use of AirPods.
I never wore any type of earphones ever. Then started using AirPods for calls, during workouts or on a plane. A year later I developed tinnitus and the only thing that changed in my life was wearing AirPods.
I’m no doctor, and who knows what caused my tinnitus. But it’s irreversible. I constantly hear a humming ring now and it’s super distracting, especially trying to go to bed.
I’m no doctor. But heads up for those who haven’t used inner ear headphones.
I know that these things can be bad, but it gets better. I have had some form of tinnitus since I was a kid. I never realized this until I talked to my wife one day and she says that no, she doesn't have a persistent beep that she can tune into.
It may have been caught be ear infections when I was a kid. I also had eardrum tubes as a kid, twice.
I don't notice it during the day or at night, though I can tune into it (like, when typing this I hear it). It's only more noticeable when I'm very tired or have a fever.
I think the brain learns to ignore/block the signal, similar to how you can be aware of breathing or hearing your heart beat, but you don't hear it all day because your brain will just not attend to it.
You should look into notch therapy apps—I have some very mild tinnitus that flared up into moderate tinnitus for a couple of months last year, so I was looking for options and found that there were some that looked promising.
A lot of women wear headphones / earpods without playing anything on them. It is a great way to stop men from trying to flirt to you, as you've got a convenient excuse to just completely ignore them!
And the lack of music is for the same reason: you need to be aware of the men trying to harass you.
Kinda funny but I think this situation is less bad than it was a year ago.
For a while it seemed like young people were hard of hearing like the elderly, somebody would be camped in a weight machine at the gym resting for 30 minutes and I’d have to stick my hand in their face to get their attention or they’d be walking down the street and I couldn’t warn them about hazards on the sidewalk.
Maybe it just doesn’t bother me anymore or maybe they’ve wised up.
I didn't fight a culture change in our work dynamic as we went from an extroverted office to a mostly headphones-on culture where people would even sometimes type instead of talk in certain meetings. In the end, I don't think it mattered except that resisting change and insisting on my way could have (would have) backfired.
Didn't see any data in the article, not that I disagree, yet what if AirPods allow a return to normality for those who wish to have some distance?
Maybe everyone's just had to put up with extroverted norms until AirPods and mobile phones came along.
Q: Do you consider yourself more introverted or more extroverted?
9% Completely introverted
29% More introverted than extroverted
31% About an equal mix of extroverted and introverted
I didn't realize that research on this topic was so sparse, I just took it as a fact that people wearing airpods don't socialize in public.
When I was in college, the line "he can't hear you, he has airpods in" was a meme. It was used as a jab at someone who wasn't paying attention because they had wireless earbuds in. So I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Do you apply this rule in reverse? If you need to speak to someone who isn't wearing earphones, do you wave at them first or do you just start talking to them?
One can hear, the other can't. So not sure how that's a reverse rule at all, it's actually the same rule applied to the reverse situation. The reverse of the rule would indeed be talking to someone without earbuds in.
> Americans are speaking less and less to one another. The number of spoken words uttered by the average person fell by 28% between 2005 and 2019.
Is it just me or does anyone else turn skeptical when seeing these precise numbers given to something that seems essentially impossible to measure with this accuracy?
To me it’s just a proxy for the amount of economic activity in a place.
Every time I go to Melbourne airport in Australia, I’m shocked that nobody - nobody - has their laptop out. In Sydney a few people do. But go to any airport in the US and if not a majority are on laptops at least a large minority seem to be..
So yes - airpods in ears, laptops in airports, city lights at night. Just a sign of how plugged in everyone is to “something” that’s happening.
It's totally incorrect to state that the area served by either Sydney or Melbourne airport has less economic activity than the area served by "any airport in the US", or even the vast majority of US airports, so whatever laptops-at-airport (and I suppose airpods-in-ears) is a proxy for it sure isn't economic activity.
I did notice the self-isolation effect of wearing any headphones a long time ago. Now, after a few years of using AirPods and finally switching back to cheap cable headphones only for work calls, it actually helps a lot for my brain to register context changes much more easily. And if you have adhd I highly recommend trying to do the same.
A friend of mine from back home mentioned he hadn't heard anything about the White House UFC fight because he's solely focused on himself right now. Honestly, I think that’s becoming ubiquitous; all of us are navel-gazing and trying to "optimize" looks, diet, exercise, Ai skills, supplements. We can sit through four hours of a Joe Rogan podcast, there are so many long form podcasts! We are all just living inside our own little bubbles now.
This sounds sad to say, but I went on a walk outside, my AirPods died and realized I hadn’t listened to the outside world in a long time. Was a nice reminder to take a breath sometimes and enjoy the world. I think we all forget that
I actually use AirPods to assist my hearing in loud environments, but this aside...
I think there's also the consideration of: how often have you really wanted a stranger to talk to you on the bus. I've talked to a few women about this, and they don't leave home without headphones because it gives them an excuse to ignore strangers hitting on them in public.
Eh. I'm autistic and audio overstimulation is very real for me. When out at a restaurant or similar public place, I often have my AirPods in with nothing playing, just noise cancellation. I can still chat with my wife or whomever is with me and hear them, albeit muffled, but it keeps everything else down and manageable. Perhaps I could get some of those Loops, which I understand are less obtrusive.
I don't know that I'm autistic but I've grown very sensitive to nuisances over the years, which is why I wear them any time I'm not with someone I know.
I use the Background Sounds feature on the iPhone, set to Dark Noise, in public transit if there are loud people nearby that my music isn't drowning out. Recommend trying it out. There's a Control Centre shortcut for it too (with an ear icon).
If you want that warmth, you have to invite it in. It has nothing to do with the airpods.
Do you ever sit somewhere in public fully relaxed without a care in the world? Do you ever poke your head up to see who else is looking at what you're looking at? Is your expression neutral or natural?
There's always someone nearby doing the same. What happens when you spot them? Don't overthink it.
"Some said it was a sign of a continued rise of Reagan- and Thatcher-style individualism. Cultural critic Allan Bloom deemed the Walkman “a nonstop…masturbational fantasy” in his 1987 book “The Closing of the American Mind.” Neo-Luddite John Zerzan saw the Walkman as part of a modern trend that encouraged a “protective sort of withdrawal from social connections.” Thomas Lipscomb, chief of the Center for the Digital Future, equated it with the euphoric drug “soma,” from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” creating, as he put it, “an airtight bubble of sound” that was nothing but a “sensory depressant.”
...
The Walkman, critics claimed, was more than just music to one’s ears. It was a tool of societal disconnect ... "
Personally i wear AirPods only in one ear - don't want to be struck by anything i didn't hear coming, and that also doubles the battery time.
Phones/Screens and headphones are being optimized to blind you and deafen you from the real world. You dont care though because it creates a pseudo-safe-zone through social status signaling (look at my expensive headphones in my ears, I look so cool and technologically advanced!).
I see people walking around with airpods in and all I see is that dude from 2010 with the shaved head, Oakley sunglasses, and one of those Jabra single-ear Bluetooth things.
There's a pretty big difference between AirPods and AirPods Pro. The former just sort of loosely sit in the outer part of your ear. The latter form a pretty good seal in your ear canal. That's how you get good noise cancelling with Airpods Pro.
The loose fit of the regular AirPods and the wired EarPods never made any sense to me.
This is actually the exact opposite for me. Rubber tipped buds will not stay put in my ears when I move around, while the original airpods models sit within my ears and don't fall out unless I'm doing cartwheels.
The AirPods Pro do come with buds in a few different sizes—have you had the opportunity to try both the small and the large types?
I've also heard that the most recent AirPods Pro fit much better for people who have had problems in the past—I think because their rubber buds also have some foam in them, to help them create a better seal.
my $9 wired earbuds from Sony also form a good ear seal by the way. No need to buy the $250 (!) thing from Apple. Unless you don't have a headphone jack.
I've used these to sleep to podcasts or quiet music at music festivals, and they block out the music from outside pretty well. This is because of the flexible rubber seal. My wireless earbuds are hard plastic all the way around and sit (securely) in my earlobes while my wired ones actually go inside my ear canal.
It also depends on the person and the model of Pros, strangely enough. The first generation stayed in my ears perfectly, but the second generation does not.
All my co-workers wear those and I hate it. Any attempt to talk to them about work or personal subjects means they have to hit their ear and pause it. It just makes me want to say nothing.
That could be an advantage if your work requires some kind of sustained concentration, for the other party at least.
I like using by headphones (which are big and over the ears) as a way to signal when I’m on concentration mode and don’t want to talk, but I do that maybe 30-40% of the time.
> Americans are speaking to one another far less than they used to. According to that study, the number of spoken words uttered by the average person fell by 28% between 2005 and 2019. Each year during that time period, the number of words people spoke in an average day declined.
I wonder what the difference is between this, and culture in EU where small talk isn't really a thing.
The EU is large and most importantly very diverse. Pretty much all the West and South of Europe has a very strong small talk culture. You shall not stereotype a country, and even less so a political and economical union of countries.
The US is larger than Europe and importantly very diverse, a melting pot you could say. You will find people in the South are far more talkative than people in the Northwest. The “Seattle Freeze” is real and I believe that it does not exist to the same extent in the South.
They all talk or at least understand English. The cultural exchange between Spain and Hungary is much smaller. Or France and Poland. And historical shaping is much different - they did not went through the same dictatorships and same wars.
I started using them recently but I already wasn't talking to strangers for a long time before that.
I suspect the constant stimulation suppresses the default-mode network, the idle wandering your mind normally experiences when you're doing nothing.
Before that, I'd sometimes hold my phone up to my ear to listen to a podcast (even on the subway at minimum volume) but it was awkward so not ubiquitous. I think buying a paid of wireless earbuds was one of those decisions that made my life subtly worse overall, like eating a whole tub of ice cream.
However it does not take into account that the kind of social interaction where people wear earbuds (i.e. loud and busy environments with many strangers, often physically closer than comfortable) is unnatural to begin with.
For me, isolating myself acoustically is a way to normalize such environments back to a more "natural" setting.
And I'm not an introvert!
All of this long predates Airpods.
I think this is a cultural difference, not a technological shift.
I learned, and am still learning, to start with very subtle conversations in contextual proximity to the person without shocking/surprising them. And then, I mostly try to listen more and try to guide them to talk more. You will be surprised at how many a lot are eager to talk to someone, if they are being listented to.
Growing up in a small Swiss village I wasn’t born in, I had to learn that you basically greeted everybody you passed in the road, under the assumption that you knew them or were supposed to know them (more conversations were not needed).
Moving to a large Swiss village, I had to learn that saying hi to random strangers was considered weird at best.
First time I visited Southern California, I was very uncomfortable with strangers striking up random conversations. Later in the trip in San Franciso, I felt that the slightly toned down form of this habit was more comfortable for me.
Moving back to Switzerland after having lived in CA for a few years, I had to relearn old habits.
Earbuds stop this practice dead in its tracks. You can't deny that.
It is definitely something one can learn. I also like it very much. Most people are just very nice and love chatting a bit as well (just be respectful of their time and know when to bow out).
There are also other functions that purely having a good time. E.g. when you are in a train with reserved seats, striking op a conversation is also a good way of gauging whether it's ok to leave your bags when you leave your seat to grab a drink or some food. Also, people feel more responsible looking after your stuff once you have socialized a bit.
For me it's not super-difficult. I came from a small village where it is normal to greet people and maybe chat, even if you don't know them.
This is HN mate!
You need to design an app so people can practice it. (Alternately, rant something about "pick up artists").
I joined my local fitness gym some months ago and use it to connect to people in the small town I moved to. Almost every time I'm there I manage to chat to someone briefly, and 50% of them have earpods in. Most of them now look up and greet me when we pass and multiple have up to me on other days to chat afterwards.
It's a skill and part of that skill is being able to give people an out of the chat if they don't feel for it, not interrupting at a bad time (mid set in a gym setting). My starter is usually a quick question with a "thank you so much, I'm new here" and if they reach for earpods to put back as they say you welcome, perfect you don't keep going. For the ones who want to chat keep them off and respond or ask something in return.
So headphones/earpods can be a barrier but for me it's a useful barrier and a clear signal, which helps both parties.
"Sorry mate, I'm reading" is hardly difficult.
Also reading something would be a clear signal (also to me) that a person doesn't want to get disturbed.
When I have to tell you that I don't want to talk, you have already disturbed me. So, talking the cues here clearly is on you, not on me.
In part it’s taking away the shared experience in public and making it “my” experience.
I'm more of a "talk when talk is needed" person but still social. i don't really interact with strangers in the street and I assume business social interactions (like restaurants) are just that, business, so I'm polite but i'm not going to crack a joke with someone i've never seen before and will likely never see again. My experience was the complete opposite, loved Portugal, would easily move there if salaries weren't shit, people were nice, i felt welcomed anywhere i went, might have been the only place outside of Brazil i have really felt at home.
I think its important to NOT BE RUDE with the random people you meet in the street but I also see no reason so strike a conversation with them. If I happen to see something that picks up my interest, like a band shirt, book i like or something like that, i might bring it up if we're going to stay in the same place for long, but starting a conversation out of nowhere just isn't a thing for me.
We're talking to strangers at the bus stop, at the grocery check out, or just wherever. It's just phatic conversation, nothing needs to come of it. Chicagoans aren't just friendly, they actually love the art of the conversation -- every conversation is a chance to put in the reps.
But the minute you step into the suburbs, this habit disappears.
No, this doesn't track my experience of Chicago at all.
This is exactly the feeling I get in the suburbs of most places, and I think the nature of car-centric suburbs serves as a decent analogy for the Airpodsification of otherwise more urban areas. Suburbanites want their palace that they can tightly control, and it rarely matters where it is as long as they can drive to anywhere they need to go, but they don't really like people and it feels like a deeply antisocial liminal space. There's rarely any specific reason anyone would want to be there, and even if they did, they'd have to drive, and if they chose not to, people there use their cars as tools for avoiding interactions with strangers. You wake up, get in your motorized comfort bubble / killing machine, and then drive from point A to B and then back to Point A. If you wanted to go hangout, oftentimes the act of driving that you've chosen sucks all that time away anyway. Drivers then get dogs so they have some sort of excuse to interact with other people who have dogs, or kids or whatever.
Then if they're lucky, they wake up one day and realize they don't see any real friends that aren't their immediate neighbors anymore, and they've lost the ability to understand how to meet people outside of work. Their old friends didn't come out for that bbq because it's dead boring and the bbq master is the only one that doesn't have a commute back. The bar in their basement sits empty because it turns out people actually want to go to the pub instead of sitting in the basement. The novelty was never the drinking itself, but the feeling of coming together in the same space and place as other people hanging out having a good time.
See that's interesting, because I *am* an introvert, but I'm quite happy to sit and talk to strangers. I don't mind it at all.
One of the few cultural similarities that I feel like London has with Scotland (where I live) is that you can just talk to people. People will talk. If you go to Glasgow and you ask for directions, chances are that the person you ask will walk with you to where you're going and point out good places to eat and interesting things to see along the way. Boston people have just learned this in a big way.
My son is even more so, and at not-quite-six he already appears to know most of the people in the town of 14,000 people where we live, how their farms are doing, how are the cows, what weight of potatoes are they getting per hectare, what prices they're getting at market, how they're getting on with that gearbox problem with the van. It takes about an hour to walk the mile or so back from school because he's got to talk to all the old guys and ask how they're doing.
Social Networking at its finest. I suspect he won't be stuck for a job when he's older.
Northener Terrifies Londoners By Saying "Hello"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YxLiLFjYKc
I hadn't noticed it before, but they even specifically mention the use of headphones as a defense mechanism near the end.
I live in London, and I remember flying to Ireland at some point, and I was seated next to an Irish lady returning home from holiday who sparked up a conversation.
My initial reaction was "Why the fuck are you talking to me?" because I had lived in London so long I was thrown off by a random person sparking conversation. But turns out she was just a lovely Irish lady flying from from holiday
Even the older introverted people I know, who I would characterise as quiet, would find it really rude to get in a taxi and not chat to the driver for the duration of the journey.
With people doing their entire careers remotely now I can only see this shift happening faster and more intensely. Small talk is a skill like any other and I think it's a sad skill to lose on a societal level. And I say this as a serious introvert that doesn't love to make small talk. Nine times out of ten, when I do make the effort to e.g. talk to a taxi driver I come away happier.
Consider that you may be!
You’re just surrounded by other people who are also introverted to the point you don’t stand out to yourself.
I’ve driven almost 4000 people home from the airport. It’s almost annoyingly ubiquitous for people to chat up the driver.
I’ll talk to strangers when it makes me feel good. But most of the time I try avoid inviting weirdos to complain about minorities or marginalized people from someone who has driven away anyone close to them.
I hope you don't complain when people use social media or have LLM as their daddy to cope then :)
I would suggest that it's your avoidance of talking to strangers that makes you think this is how a lot of them think. And it kind of proves the point that society can suffer because of it. If you went out tomorrow and talked to 100 random strangers for 10mins I'd be surprised if any of them complained about minorities.
Chances are at least 20 of them would.
I also do agree with the comment that airpods do seem to get in the way of the most basic of social etiquette. Simple "please" and "thank you" are increasingly rare since you can't recognize the cues when your ears are full of something else.
FWIW I live in Amsterdam (also western Europe) and anyone in the streets under 50 is wearing them, myself included.
> They keep them in while ordering and paying for things in stores and supermarkets.
As a GenYer I find this rude and I'll take them out any time I interact with someone.
My point being that their ubiquity doesn't have to mean people being rude or indifferent to eachother.
I think people have the right to choose comfort and focus, anywhere outside of a conversation with another person.
> As a GenYer I find this rude and I'll take them out any time I interact with someone.
I don't take my headphones off while paying for things in a supermarket - because you aren't really expected to talk or listen in this scenario, and the cashier doesn't want to interact with you either. But for anything more involved, like ordering something in a coffeeshop - yeah, absolutely.
This is an assumption that I would interpret as rude if I were the cashier
Focus on what?
For me, on my own thoughts, rather than other peoples' conversations.
Interesting point. Airpods actually work great as hearing aids and I personally use that in loud environments, but I find myself cringing when I do because exactly of what you say. So maybe normalizing their use even when interacting is fine? Still, I can't shake off the idea that I'm not fully connected with you if I'm talking to you and I'm wearing something in my ears...
It's essentially the same unspoken etiquette rule as what you're socially expected to do if riding a crowded elevator.
Go commute by NYC subway 10 times a week, M-F especially during peak tourist season and you'll understand.
I intentionally behave completely different if I'm in a small town of 3000 people or walking down the street, shopping, riding transit in a large city.
Assuming you live in a locale with a reasonably efficient system. I've heard some horror stories about north american public transport. Other countries tend to do much better with timetables and routes.
Too crowded, too hot, there’s a decent chance of arriving at your destination drenched in sweat. Not to mention how absolutely gross the people sitting next to you will often be.
I’ll happily take a few parking fines every day rather than getting in the tube.
#moraloutrage
Like, there was some reading of newspapers and magazines, but not that much. They were large, you know. Most people stared silently out of the window. Multiple people reading newspapers on the bus would be rare occurrence. And it was NOT noisy unlike tiktok video.
> Americans are speaking less and less to one another. The number of spoken words uttered by the average person fell by 28% between 2005 and 2019.
Yeah buying airpods seems like better idea than being stabbed/beaten up
Correlation for sure, I’m less sure about causation though. It seems equally likely to me that other factors are driving increased social anxiety/isolation which in turn drives people to wear headphones to avoid social interactions.
This hit me. I often use headphones during chores, including going grocery shopping. I love human interaction, but not while pickings things into my shopping basket. For years I'd also leave them in when paying (audio paused, of course). It took a cashier tell me I was being rude before I realized. She was absolutely right, of course. I do make an effort to visibly remove my headphones when expecting human interaction now. A big thanks to that cashier, and my apologies!
I'm usually playing dark noise on noise cancelling earphones most of the time, and that helps me tune out the constant, stress inducing bombardment of unwelcome auditory inputs.
Even watching someone else walk around a city with headphones/earbuds in is something that makes me uncomfortable by proxy. It's like someone deciding that walking around with beer goggles is a good idea
I swear my tinnitus is a result of use of AirPods.
I never wore any type of earphones ever. Then started using AirPods for calls, during workouts or on a plane. A year later I developed tinnitus and the only thing that changed in my life was wearing AirPods.
I’m no doctor, and who knows what caused my tinnitus. But it’s irreversible. I constantly hear a humming ring now and it’s super distracting, especially trying to go to bed.
I’m no doctor. But heads up for those who haven’t used inner ear headphones.
Source: got bad tinnitus from motorcycling, became depressed with suicidal ideation and then got over it.
I still notice it every night at bed. Or anytime it’s quiet.
I try not to think about it, because I feel like it gets amplified when I do.
But it’s daily for the last 4-years :(
Hope you’re ok now. Please see someone if you’re not.
It may have been caught be ear infections when I was a kid. I also had eardrum tubes as a kid, twice.
I don't notice it during the day or at night, though I can tune into it (like, when typing this I hear it). It's only more noticeable when I'm very tired or have a fever.
I think the brain learns to ignore/block the signal, similar to how you can be aware of breathing or hearing your heart beat, but you don't hear it all day because your brain will just not attend to it.
I don’t notice it at all now. It’s possible it’s still there, but I never think about it.
It’ll probably happen to you too at some point. It can’t be forced though, unfortunately.
Have you had your hearing checked out by an audiologist? Any hearing loss?
Hearing loss (age) and damage (loud noise) are the most likely culprits.
No hearing loss at all.
My hearing is actually better than age appropriate, so the doctors say I’ll just have to live with it because they can’t detect it.
And the lack of music is for the same reason: you need to be aware of the men trying to harass you.
For a while it seemed like young people were hard of hearing like the elderly, somebody would be camped in a weight machine at the gym resting for 30 minutes and I’d have to stick my hand in their face to get their attention or they’d be walking down the street and I couldn’t warn them about hazards on the sidewalk.
Maybe it just doesn’t bother me anymore or maybe they’ve wised up.
Didn't see any data in the article, not that I disagree, yet what if AirPods allow a return to normality for those who wish to have some distance?
Maybe everyone's just had to put up with extroverted norms until AirPods and mobile phones came along.
Q: Do you consider yourself more introverted or more extroverted?
9% Completely introverted
29% More introverted than extroverted
31% About an equal mix of extroverted and introverted
15% More extroverted than introverted
7% Completely extroverted
9% Not sure
n=1000 2023 YouGov internet poll
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/rwpllcwimy/Introverts%20and%20Ex...
Also, Susan Cain's book Quiet claimed 1/3 to 1/2 of the population are introverted. (Who knows)
When I was in college, the line "he can't hear you, he has airpods in" was a meme. It was used as a jab at someone who wasn't paying attention because they had wireless earbuds in. So I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.
You can see them. Don’t talk to me. If you must, get my attention first with a wave or something - don’t touch me.
I suspect the latter.
Is it just me or does anyone else turn skeptical when seeing these precise numbers given to something that seems essentially impossible to measure with this accuracy?
Every time I go to Melbourne airport in Australia, I’m shocked that nobody - nobody - has their laptop out. In Sydney a few people do. But go to any airport in the US and if not a majority are on laptops at least a large minority seem to be..
So yes - airpods in ears, laptops in airports, city lights at night. Just a sign of how plugged in everyone is to “something” that’s happening.
> I felt like half the people around me in pubic had some kind of device-connected earwear on their head.
I think there's also the consideration of: how often have you really wanted a stranger to talk to you on the bus. I've talked to a few women about this, and they don't leave home without headphones because it gives them an excuse to ignore strangers hitting on them in public.
I use the Background Sounds feature on the iPhone, set to Dark Noise, in public transit if there are loud people nearby that my music isn't drowning out. Recommend trying it out. There's a Control Centre shortcut for it too (with an ear icon).
Do you ever sit somewhere in public fully relaxed without a care in the world? Do you ever poke your head up to see who else is looking at what you're looking at? Is your expression neutral or natural?
There's always someone nearby doing the same. What happens when you spot them? Don't overthink it.
https://www.freethink.com/consumer-tech/sony-walkman-technop...
"Some said it was a sign of a continued rise of Reagan- and Thatcher-style individualism. Cultural critic Allan Bloom deemed the Walkman “a nonstop…masturbational fantasy” in his 1987 book “The Closing of the American Mind.” Neo-Luddite John Zerzan saw the Walkman as part of a modern trend that encouraged a “protective sort of withdrawal from social connections.” Thomas Lipscomb, chief of the Center for the Digital Future, equated it with the euphoric drug “soma,” from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” creating, as he put it, “an airtight bubble of sound” that was nothing but a “sensory depressant.”
...
The Walkman, critics claimed, was more than just music to one’s ears. It was a tool of societal disconnect ... "
Personally i wear AirPods only in one ear - don't want to be struck by anything i didn't hear coming, and that also doubles the battery time.
Airpods Pro with transparency mode is the best for this
And having music in both ears, nice stereo, etc., definitely decreases situational awareness even if the outside sounds come through fine.
I wonder how people do this or if my ears are just shaped weird, because I can’t even sit totally still at my desk without them falling out.
The loose fit of the regular AirPods and the wired EarPods never made any sense to me.
I've also heard that the most recent AirPods Pro fit much better for people who have had problems in the past—I think because their rubber buds also have some foam in them, to help them create a better seal.
I've used these to sleep to podcasts or quiet music at music festivals, and they block out the music from outside pretty well. This is because of the flexible rubber seal. My wireless earbuds are hard plastic all the way around and sit (securely) in my earlobes while my wired ones actually go inside my ear canal.
I like using by headphones (which are big and over the ears) as a way to signal when I’m on concentration mode and don’t want to talk, but I do that maybe 30-40% of the time.
I wonder what the difference is between this, and culture in EU where small talk isn't really a thing.
Also, nit, but Europe has ~2x the population of the States, and definitely more cultural and linguistic diversity.
I suspect the constant stimulation suppresses the default-mode network, the idle wandering your mind normally experiences when you're doing nothing.
Before that, I'd sometimes hold my phone up to my ear to listen to a podcast (even on the subway at minimum volume) but it was awkward so not ubiquitous. I think buying a paid of wireless earbuds was one of those decisions that made my life subtly worse overall, like eating a whole tub of ice cream.