The AirPods Effect

Yeah, great article. But it should get to the point.

The reason you need to physically remove yourself is because of the insane lunatics that blast trash music and do a dance while aggressively panhandling or screaming at you for trying to commute quitely on the train to work. A hallmark of daily life when I worked in SF and in NYC.

A great way to fix the fake problem would be to aggressively enforce the existing laws, starting with tickets, and if that doesn't work, incarceration. Apparently it's not politically correct to do that though so I guess we are all second class citizens who need to live in a low trust society where people are increasingly isolated.

To be fair when you live in a big city and you have to take the subway all the time, it just feels physically nice to remove the background noise whether it's the noise of the train itself or the musicians or the people asking loudly for money. I don't even have airpods, I have good old earplugs because I often too lazy to choose the soundtrack of my own life.

It's not that don't want to talk to unknown people, it's that it's more important for me to avoid the unpleasantness of it all. It's all relative of course, I'd take a fast, crowded train any day rather than having to do the good old accelerate-and-stop of a traffic jam/city intersections.

I live in a country with somewhat solid social net so I'd actually be in favor or preventing people to ask for money (loudly and in a pathos-optimized voice) in the train. It's generally people who are 1. having other income 2. drug addicts 3. mental issues or a combination of all that. I don't blame them but I wish there was a cruelty-free way of preventing them to do that because I don't think the amount of money they make is worth the amount of inconvenience they cause. Of course they are other ways of making the service better (more trains, closer to each other) but I believe the subway company is already hard at work on that.

My point I guess is that it doesn't take much for something to become an unpleasant experience (as anyone who's ever had a significant dose of LSD will tell you) and that's it's easy to blame people (individualistic, selfish blablabla) but system-thinking is how you solve that kind of issue (and it's not easy)

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 interactions 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.

After reading about the default mode network here a few times recently, I think missing out on all that critical "daydreaming" time is a bigger problem. I've stopped listening to things while I'm out walking, and I've noticed a lot more solutions and ideas coming to me. The DMN seems to fall into a similar area as meditation (remember when that was all the rage among tech leaders?); the lowered input noise gives the brain time to clear things out.

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.

The modern world is funny. I have a hearing impairment, tinnitus, and use both AirPods and less visible hearing aids to hear people better. I only wear the AirPods around people who know me well enough to know that I am wearing them so that I can better hear them. I don’t want strangers to think I don’t want to hear them or that I am being rude. When I am out among strangers, I wear the less visible hearing aids.

But a funny consequence is that because my modern, less visible, hearing aids are connected to my phone, I am often listening to podcasts or news and nobody can tell. So sometimes a stranger will say something and I have to pause the audio and ask them to repeat themselves.

I am wondering what social norms will be like once everyone has less visible electronics in their ears.

The author is from Germany and still complaining about Americans interacting with each other less in public? I've been to Germany so many times and almost never seen anyone speaking to strangers on trains/buses/trams. Once I was on a train from Cologne to Frankfurt with a colleague and we were talking nonstop. After a while we realized it was just us talking and probably disturbing everyone else!

People go to extreme lengths to avoid talking to strangers on public transport even in developing countries. Earphones are just so effective.

I was in college when the first iPod came out. As an early adopter that was super into my music that first year or so, wearing white headphones around campus actually came with more social interaction. It felt like everyone was staring at me and usually people constantly interrupted my jam sessions to ask me about them. The novelty quickly wore off for me, I realized I preferred a more private speakered environment for my jams. I also did and still suffer from massive pain caused from most in ear headphones, even the recent AirPods with adjustable silicone tips I use sparingly and never more than a hour or so.

What was weird was about 2 years later it completely flipped. I had written off my iPod in public while the entire world adopted them. I went from being the only one on a bus with white corded buds, usually recipient of people’s gazes, I was being antisocial and everyone’s eyes were telling about it. To suddenly, I was the only one engaged. Everyone else was being antisocial. This was well before the iPhone but people still just stared at their play list and stopped interacting. A quiet bus full of college students was a strange thing to witness but it took over as the social norm.

> Where I live, in southwest Germany, AirPods are far less common.

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.

I'd much rather be surrounded by people wearing earbuds than have people watching tiktoks through their phone speakers on the subway

Different public spaces have wildly different expectations with regard to social interaction.

Most people know better than to strike up a conversation with a stranger who is watching a theater performance, reading in a library, or walking briskly to work. Whereas chatting with people at a club, sporting event, carnival, conference, convention, etc is socially acceptable.

But many places are ambiguous like public transit, gyms, shops, airplanes, etc. Assessing whether someone in those contexts would welcome interaction with strangers requires social awareness.

Unfortunately, some people overlook or deliberately ignore these cues, so folks who aren't interested in social interaction have taken to wearing headphones in those contexts to make it as obvious as possible. If you're the kind of person who is surprised by how many people are now wearing headphones, it may be because you were missing their more subtle cues before.

I live in a big city and notice this a lot as well. I’m starting to reduce my headphone usage. My hearing is getting worse at a young age.

I don’t think the default should be needing to have a soundtrack to your life. I’m a long distance runner and often run 15-20+ miles without music or headphones. It’s nice

As someone who lived in New York for over a decade and grew up in the general area, there is not a single person who would think its normal if you're trying to strike up a conversation on the subway or even really when walking down the street.

The etiquette is to keep to yourself, airpods aren't creating that dynamic. The normal assumption if you don't know the person in most contexts them interacting with you in NYC is they're up to something and that's just normal US city dynamics with > 10 million people on a busy day.

The dynamic changes when you're hanging out in front of your apartment for say a cigarette or something or at a bar or sitting in the park but even then its not wrong to signal you're not open to interaction in those situations its simply more normal to chat with neighbors or other people hanging out.

By jove people and their airpods are isolating us! Why cant we just talk to eachother like in the good old days https://i.imgur.com/38q0wOe.png

It is an amazing piece of technology that allows you to ignore people at will by pretending you're not hearing what they're saying if they insist.

AirPods for sure do not make you more lonely. It's about your personality. Either you are an introvert or not.

> “No one talks on the bus. No one greets the barista. Even in class, students are choosing to listen to music instead of their professors,”

Why? Bother them for no good reason? I am incredibly annoyed when people come to me to make small talk. Same with classes... if the topic is interesting or the professor is good at its job people will listen. If the professor has a very non-interesting class or is a boring person, why bother listing to it? You read the notes, get a the lowest passing grade possible and go on with your life. Before tablets people would read their newspapers and be very annoyed if you bothered them. Now they have AirPods instead of tablets or newspapers. Same thing: no everybody wants to talk to everybody.

When I'm doing a task, whether it's going to the grocery store or heading to work, the last thing I want to do is talk to someone. And in my personal experience, people don't randomly try to speak to me with or without headphones, unless it's someone wanting to pass out a pamphlet or a story employee asking if I need something.

If I can make my social outtings in this regard easier and less stressfree, that far outweidghs any anti-social stigma.

> 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.

The author is a "Firm believer that humankind took a wrong turn with the invention of the smartphone." and has a new book coming out, so naturally he is trying to push some anti-tech narrative.

No, headphones don't make people antisocial. If someone is wearing headphones, respect their privacy and just leave them alone. Some people just don't like to chat to random people on the subway or at the supermarket. Some people just don't see the value of mundane conversations with strangers.

It depends on the culture and personality. Some people like it, some don't. In the US, people are more inclined to chat to strangers, and in Germany for example they aren't. These differences are actually what make us "human", so it's not a binary decision of: talking to strangers == good, and headphones == bad.

I wear over-ear headphones almost all the time when I'm out on my own using public transportation, grocery shopping etc.

I listen to audio books (fiction) and it's great. I'm an introvert and this actually helps me keep high energy levels all day long. Another plus is I'm usually immersed in the story and not using my phone (well apart from it being a playback device) when sitting down or waiting somewhere.

And it's precisely this extra energy I can use to have more meaningful interactions with other human beings. I don't wear headphones when I go climbing for example and interact with random strangers quite a bit when I do.

I also don't appreciate the stereotypes that are flung about in the article. I'm also German, plenty of interactions as described in his Jalapeno-Story all day every day.

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

Everything old is new again; observe this song from 1983: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR_b3WYHZ7o

I think "Your Brain Needs Idle Time" is more important than the effect on random social interactions.

The most jarring thing to me is seeing how kids (high school and college age) use Airpods now. I will see a group of friends hanging out in public and none of them take their Airpods out! They are talking and socializing, but they feel no need to remove the Airpods from their ears when nothing is playing. They're frictionlessly moving between real life conversation and content on their phones. This includes situations where you really think you'd want to take the Airpods out, like playing pickup basketball.

I don't know how to feel about this. I guess I'm happy that they're out of their house at all, but it does feel very sci-fi. In sci-fi books a common trope is for characters in the future to have neural implants that seamlessly and permanently connect them to some mega-internet. 24/7 Airpods is like the caveman version of that.

One thing I find concerning is the amount of people I see driving these days with AirPods. Don’t think they can hear emergency sirens or honks very well that way. I think it it’s even illegal in some locations. I assume they do this in older cars without a way to connect their phone or just like immersive sound.

I am autistic. I can’t even count the number of times I got into dangerous situations because of my crappy social skills when strangers chatted me up. I don’t know, maybe strangers are well-meaning and kind to neurotypical people, or maybe people with good social skills can understand the intentions of strangers fast and cut off suspicious interactions before they are harassed or conned while I realize what’s happening only when it’s already happening, or maybe shitty people can sense my chronic social confusion and target me specifically… but I personally quite enjoy modern headphones etiquette where I live and the norm being not having random interactions. It feels way safer than in pre-headphones era (I grew up in a relatively low tech environment in a small town).

Plus, processing spoken language is physically exhausting even when I am having an enjoyable conversation with someone I love.

Other people already commented on the overstimulation aspect.

Not suggesting that the world should be remade to accommodate my needs, of course, just wanted to share my experience, I guess.

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.

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.

Anecdotally, when it comes to talking to strangers I've often felt it's easier to converse with older people than those my own age. For example, the conversations feel more genuine and less "forced" on both sides, and overall I feel more comfortable being myself.

The reason might be because they grew up in a world where social media was non-existent, so interacting with strangers was more common. As a result, they tend to be more socially intelligent than the younger generations.

Will be thinking about this article the next time I reach for my AirPods as I'm about to leave the house.

Tinnitus

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 stopped chit-chatting at the water cooler because I have a specific sense of humor that not everybody likes. And by "not likes", I mean the feminist women in my department get offended. Very easily. And because they're women, they hold special power wrt HR. So I just quietly spend my day now.

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

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)

> Where I live, in southwest Germany, AirPods are far less common.

Seems like there’s a high probability the author just drives everywhere at home.

The author has clearly never tried to leg press 300+ pounds in the gym to Madonna's "Like a Virgin". Sometimes the biggest sell of earbuds is noise REDUCTION, not what sounds they can make.

I do agree that there are "social interactions" that are greatly devalued by people wishing not to be interacted with. But for me the earbuds are usually in to block annoyances, not avoid human contact.

Walking around cars or in cities, especially in New York, is incredibly loud. The ANC protect my ears on the subways and streets.

What I would really love is an option to have a small indicator light or visible signal on my earpiece that means “there’s no sound playing”. And if I’m using them just for noise cancellation but want to appear approachable, I can turn it on. Honestly would be great for sound my home, as sometimes I keep them in when doing chores just because I don’t have a free hand, but I would like my wife to know she can talk to and I’ll hear her.

Noise cancelling is a treasure.

What I like about them is the ease of use.

Same article was written about the proliferation of the Sony Walkman back in the 80s. Same article was written about newspapers on trains. File under “new thing is bad.”

i've been wearing headphones in public since the 90s (walkman > discman), i have no idea how the author thinks headphones is a new phenomenon. I'm not particularly interested in unsolicited advice or conversation, so that's a plus for me.

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.

Do tattoos too. American living in Switzerland and it's shocking when I go back.

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.

> People now wear their AirPods all day at the office.

Hey, that's me! Not with AirPods specifically, but I do have noise cancelling headphones. We can talk over lunch or during a break.

> They keep them in while ordering and paying for things in stores and supermarkets.

Now that is just rude.

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.

This is not new. AirPods are newish, but this is not new. People have been wearing headphones in public spaces since the Walkman, if not before, in large numbers. You can probably find opinion columns bemoaning this shortly after the introduction of the Walkman.

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.

Wearing on public transport: meh, the chances I chat with a total stranger is quite small.

Wearing on walks around my neighborhood: yes, totally see how this nudges away from spontaneous chats with neighbors / acquaintances as we pass each other and wave, but don't stop perhaps due to the friction of removing airpods and sense we may be interrupting each other.

Sometimes if I see a neighbor I know up ahead, I will preemptively remove my airpods to open the possibility of a chat. Most of the time just a hello, but sometimes a nice catch up. With the airpods, very unlikely to chat.

Like huge SUV and pickup trucks in urban environments, guns and the like; their usage - and the perceived need for them - is a strong code smell of inhumane environments.

> 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?

Noise is a big problem but this is a terrible solution. People clearly hate noise. Rich neighbourhoods are always quiet. It's basically the point. We need to go hard on noise. I think it's one of the biggest sources of unhappiness today. We can start with motor vehicles which are easily the biggest single source of noise. People shouldn't have to disable their ears to deal with this constant assault.

The author's going to be floored when he hears about video games