GoKawiilA LITTLE TIME away can be clarifying. When you’ve had a break from a place, you’re able to see it with fresh eyes. You notice things that routine and familiarity had rendered invisible.
During my last trip home to the U.S., one of the things that jumped out at me was the number of people with AirPods in their ears.
Where I live, in southwest Germany, AirPods are far less common. It was jarring to see so many little white globules dripping out of the ears of those around me in coffee shops, in grocery stores, and pretty much everywhere else I went during my trip to suburban Detroit. Whether young or old, chic or grungy, athleisured or denimed, everyone seemed to be sporting some type of earphone.
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.
The popularity of AirPods is nothing new. But as the functionality of our tech-connected ear gear has improved — and as podcasts have exploded into one of the most consumed forms of media in America — earphones have assumed a bigger role in our daily lives.
By some market estimates, 44% of Americans use Bluetooth or wireless earphones, and an additional 24% use something wired. I couldn’t find good data on the percentage of people who regularly wear earphones as they go about their daily lives. But during my recent trips to Michigan and Florida, I felt like half the people around me in pubic had some kind of device-connected earwear on their head.
There is disappointingly little peer-reviewed research on the effects earphones have on our daily lives and interactions. But the evidence we do have suggests that while AirPods and similar technologies do some wonderful things for us, they also subtly influence our beliefs, reinforce our insecurities, and push us farther apart.
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