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- Hacker News
- 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.
by mcculley - Ever thought about wrapping your AirPods to be skin-colored? I wonder if that would be more inviting for strangers than the stereotypical white color.by rogerrogerr
- Wouldn't it be cool if this situation could be detected and when you hit pause it would actually repeat them for you?by russdill
- 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.
by conductr - I don’t have airpods but I still use earpods for video conferencing. Honestly they fit and sound better (louder) when I have right and left switched.by kjkjadksj
- > 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.
Have you tried replacing them with foam tips?
by Dracophoenix - That's my memory as well. Early '00s, I was also in college and seemingly one year campus went from a broadly friendly, social place to one with a lot of people, headphones in, focused on their own little world.
There were Walkmans and disc Walkmans before that, of course, but MP3 players were a step change in social isolation, from my perspective. Bluetooth earbuds + a wave of streaming audio content have been another.
by adsteel_ - 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.
by tacker2000 - I mean what do you want the author to write, cooking recipes? Where is he "pushing" it? Writing a substack related to the theme of the book you're writing is, apparently .. bad? Even if true, are we we not supposed to market things at all. Sure, there's a line after which shilling becomes distasteful, is that really the case here or is it an overreaction?by abhaynayar
- On a gut level I agree 100% as I'm feeling the same feelings and prefer no contact. But on a biological level it's definitely better to have more social interactions and talking to strangers specifically has many benefits to both you as an individual and for creating a better society.by lnenad
- I don't think the author presents it as such a binary decision though.
The fact is that in practice, it's either headphones in or out when in public. Meaning wearing them all the time effectively means IRL Do Not Disturb.
> I think we need regular doses of real human contact — not just with close friends, but with acquaintances, and even with strangers — to counterbalance all the negativity we encounter in the news and online, and to remind us that, on the whole, people are kind and well-meaning.
I think the author may have a point here, but he'll be hard pressed to convince anyone to give up the benefits of 'sonic isolation' through music and noise cancelation that people seem to have discovered.
by jorisw - 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
by try_the_bass - They have a situational awarenes modeby number6
- You can turn most of them into transparency mode too. I do that sometimes when I'm in an area where I feel unsafe. So I can hear people sneaking up on me.by wolvoleo
- 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.by parodysbird
- 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.
by malshe - in the netherlands trains are usually too noisy to focus on anything unless it’s a silent car or 7am.by rikima_
- Oh god I love how quiet European trains are. I used to take trains a lot in my childhood and until my 20s in Ukraine. Sometimes trains were buzzing with voices during the day, especially if someone was drinking. Not all rides were like this, of course, but in general I remember a lot of noise. German trains are so soothing in comparison!
- > 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.
by shevis - >> It seems equally likely to me that other factors are driving increased social anxiety
Social anxiety thrives on avoidance. It's a feedback loop. So likely it's correlation + causation. Your anxious so you wear the headphones to block out the world which only breeds more anxiety.
by basisword - > Correlation ... causation
Yeah, I'm surprised this isn't highlighted more in these comments. "A small study" and "an article" and such seems to be the basis for this article, and yet there's seemingly no work done to identify if it's actually that people's attitudes have changed, and they're adopting headphones because of that.
It's not as if there's been major, literal earth-changing events that happened in incredibly recent memory that might have changed how people socialize or interact or anything, right? Let's just blame a specific brand of a piece of technology that has existed for decades, instead.
by DanHulton - 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.by AussieWog93
- > 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.
by jorisw - > > 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.
by Hoodedcrow - good that every AH has selfscankassa and i don’t need to take out anythingby rikima_
- > I think people have the right to comfort and focus
Focus on what?
by titanomachy - Yeah I take them out too. The only exception is ear protectors (loops) which I wear in discoteques/parties. When I talk to people I don't usually take them out because I wear them for protection. If they notice I will explain and they don't mind.
In fact it's easier to hear them with those in anyway. I'm just very sensitive to sound and I have already damaged my hearing a bit when I was young.
by wolvoleo - >> 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...
- I'd much rather be surrounded by people wearing earbuds than have people watching tiktoks through their phone speakers on the subwayby MBlume
- those are just people with bad manners.by misiti3780