People Taking To Themselves: Life in the Earbud Age
- Sue Leonard
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Have you ever noticed that when you’re in a store or walking on the sidewalk, you always see people talking to themselves?
It’s a strange feeling. Sometimes a person passing you looks straight at you, and for a split second you think they’re talking to you.
Thanks to earbuds, people can carry on entire conversations without holding a phone to their ears.
I’ve noticed that some people are so accustomed to talking while shopping or running errands that they’ve developed a kind of “phone-speak” voice—not quite a whisper, but several decibels lower than their normal indoor voice.
I’ll admit, earbuds can be helpful. Many grocery store employees wear them—presumably to ask questions to some mothership while they’re restocking shelves. Checkout clerks and baggers don’t have to walk over to customer service if they need to check a price.
And okay, if a husband is shopping for his wife, he might need to call and ask a question.
But many people are having full-blown conversations. Hubby and I often wonder: what do people have to talk about that requires being on the phone all the time?
And it’s not just earbuds. Believe it or not, I recently saw a grandfather on the sidewalk holding the handlebars of his grandson’s bike. He was guiding the bike because his grandson was wearing virtual-reality goggles.
I was flabbergasted. My mind exploded.
Why is this kid wearing goggles while riding a bike?
It’s not as if grandpa had to distract him from an unpleasant landscape. Both sides of the street were lined with trees, vibrant bougainvillea in full bloom, dotted with the occasional business or apartment building.
What kind of lesson is grandpa teaching the kid?
That it’s better to look at some virtual fantasy than the scenery around him?
That nature isn’t good enough and needs to be supplemented?
That he doesn’t have to pay attention to where he’s going while maneuvering a vehicle?
And grandpa, no less. I might understand if it were a twenty-something parent who has grown up with these technologies. But grandpa?
What amazed me even more than the sight of grandpa steering his grandson down the sidewalk was the research I found afterward.
The most recent study I could locate on headphone use and accidents dated back to 2011. (1) It found that many accidental deaths among pedestrians were associated with headphone use. Researchers suggested that headphone users can experience “inattentional blindness,” where the brain is so focused on the audio content that it fails to process what’s happening around them.
2011! That’s fifteen years ago. That was before earbuds really took off—around 2018.
Has technology become so popular that we’d rather not know about the dangers?
Now, I should probably confess something. Among my peers, I’m considered extremely tech-savvy for my age. I have almost 200 apps on my phone. I’ve been reading e-books for more than fifteen years. If a question comes up in conversation, I’m the first one to grab my phone to look it up.
I use AI frequently (and if you use Google, you probably do too—you just didn’t realize it).
I’ve even been known to call someone or Shazam a song while waiting at a stoplight.
Still, I do draw the line somewhere.
But letting your grandkid wear virtual-reality goggles while riding a bike? Preposterous.
One more interesting finding: a 2021 study commissioned by Ford Motor Company’s European division tested the effect of wearing headphones while driving. (2) Another study found that cyclists wearing earbuds missed 68% of the sounds around them – the “loud auditory stop signals” that protect them from traffic. (3)
Researchers found that wearing headphones slowed drivers’ reaction time to sounds by an average of 4.2 seconds—long enough to make the difference between avoiding a crash and having one. (4)
And reaction time slows as we age. By 60, our brains react almost twice as slowly as those of a 20-year-old. (5)
On the bright side, older adults often compensate with strategy, efficiency, and experience. Staying physically active can also help slow—or even partially reverse—some of these age-related changes.
Still, the next time you see someone strolling through the grocery store, talking quietly to themselves while staring into space, don’t worry. They probably aren’t losing their mind. They’re just on the phone.
And if you ever see me walking through the produce aisle talking to myself? Relax. I’m not wearing earbuds. I’m just trying to remember if I need onions.
References
Richard Lichenstein, Daniel Clarence Smith, Jordan Lynne Ambrose, Laurel Anne Moody. Headphone use and pedestrian injury and death in the United States: 2004-2011, NIH National Library of Medicine, January 16, 2012,
Steve Terry, Can Minnesota Drivers Be Held Liable for Wearing Earbuds or AirPods While Driving? Jan 12, 2024
Ford’s 8D Sound Experiment Reveals Dangers of Wearing Headphones on the Road, YouTube, 2022
Northfield Hospital Clinics, On the road or trail, use Your Earbuds Safely, July 19, 2023
James L. Fozard, Max Vercruyssen, Sara L. Reynolds, P. A. Hancock, Reginald E. Quilter, Age Differences and Changes in Reaction Time: The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, Oxford Academic, Journal of Gerontology, July 4, 1994.
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