The Worst of Both Worlds

For a while during the pandemic, I did my grocery shopping on Saturday nights to avoid the crowds. I found that Saturday-night shoppers, especially at the height of COVID, behaved differently from the people I was used to seeing at the store on pre-pandemic weekend mornings. The store had a grim, lonely vibe — there was no chitchat in the aisles, not even much eye contact, really. Everybody was on a mission, determined to get in and get out of the place as quickly as possible. One thing I found interesting about my fellow Saturday-night shoppers: a majority of them were wearing earbuds or headphones. This meant that most of the people in the store were in their own little worlds, listening to their own podcasts or music rather than the Sheryl Crow song coming out of the store’s PA system or the words of their fellow shoppers. And their earbuds and headphones were a signal to the world: I don’t want to interact with you; leave me alone. We focus a lot on the effects of smartphones on our lives and our society. People worry that their attention spans are being pillaged by apps that are designed to keep them hooked. They complain that their kids never look up from their phones. Almost all of the concern about the effects of smartphones focuses on their visual enticements — the bright colors and fast-moving videos. But what have smartphones’ audio capabilities done to our society and ourselves? I worry that it’s nothing very good. The smartphone revolution has enabled two types of audio consumption — one inward-facing, and the other outward-facing. Most of us are now carrying around in our pockets a device capable of either sealing us off from the rest of the world or inflicting our soundscape on everyone else. <a href="https://medium.com/bigger-picture/the-worst-of-both-worlds-4aa87e26a02b">Visit Now</a>