May 2, 2024 | OPINION | By Grace Gassel
Any time I enter a public space around campus, I see at least a few people wearing headphones.
They are most often worn when the individual is alone. People wear them during transition periods around campus, either strolling or sprinting across the quad to the dining halls and into academic buildings. People wear them during mealtimes, with music, podcasts or silence blasting. I, myself, wear them quite often during these awkward in-between times or when I am alone. People wear headphones for many different reasons.
Besides merely avoiding the discomfort of being alone, headphones can relieve social anxiety and provide a sense of privacy and comfort in public spaces. In recent years, they have risen as an essential fashion accessory, giving the wearer an air of mystery to their outfit and aura.
Further, wearing headphones during transition periods can help the time pass by and facilitate moments of individual reflection. This article will address those who wear headphones for personal enjoyment, not those who utilize them for mental health purposes.
Although wearing headphones does have several benefits, the overwhelming impact of headphone wearing in public places makes the individual seem more isolated, cutting off the potential for social connection. Further, constant, isolated, personalized stimulation and content digestion of wearing headphones removes the individual from the present. It also eliminates any opportunity to ruminate in boredom, a feeling and practice we have overwhelmingly lost in the digital age.
When students wear headphones in public spaces where we congregate, opportunities for the small social connections that sew the fabric of social camaraderie and trust necessary to build community are eliminated. Our campus is small and many claim it to be “cliquey.” The use of headphones in shared spaces makes it even more difficult to approach or casually interact with others, as wearing headphones signals to strangers that one doesn’t want to be talked to.
I am not suggesting that if we all stop wearing headphones, we will suddenly become one big happy family, but it could begin to erode the casual separation we have from one another and increase our sense of community.
Headphones also eliminate the opportunity to sit alone with your thoughts, experience boredom and exist in the present moment. While wearing headphones, I often experience an odd in-between inertia of my internal thoughts and emotions while existing in the outside physical world. One exists in a limbo of internal and external experiences. This phenomenon is known as liminality. While this feeling is sometimes necessary and can facilitate individual reflection, as stated previously, too often do we indulge in this half-connection to the world.
Additionally, wearing headphones in transitionary periods provides a constant stream of content, potentially silencing any stray thoughts we might have when sitting in silence or boredom. It also might prevent us from fully experiencing the depth of our emotions due to the intervening content. I believe these moments are critical to our development as individuals and for humanity.
How might we experience the world differently if our senses were 100% in tune to the world around us? Wearing headphones is an instant escape. It is easy to jump into a podcast or song and disappear inside your head. However, this takes away the intentionality of escapism. I have found it to be too simple, too frequent and too automatic. It is passive escapism. Maybe it’s just my addictive personality. In an already individualistic and algorithmically driven world, headphones further entrench us into ourselves.
We choose what content we want to listen to and our degree of conscious participation in the world. Yes, lowering our use of headphones is a difficult task, as we need to change our daily habits, but I think it will be worth it. I don’t blame or judge anyone for wearing headphones all the time, as I do it myself, but I do think it is critical to understand the potential impact their constant use is having on us socially and psychologically.
We need to develop and practice other methods of intentional, active, rejuvenating escapism to keep us going in a world of constant stimulation. We need to engage in community building and conscious interactions with the world to pull us from the liminal limbo headphones can drag us into.
It seems like you put a lot of thought into the matter, but it does need to be pointed out this article is lacking in inclusivity.
The article encourages social judgements around headphones by portraying them as an optional and unnecessary choice, designed for avoidance. Which is not true – plenty of people wear headphones as an accommodation. One that increases daily functioning and the ability to connect with others.
I get where you are coming from and totally appreciate that your perspective is limited to your experience, however, we could really use the help to reduce stigma around these sorts of accommodations. It is really challenging when things like headphones can’t be met with empathy or understanding, because society believes that they are an active symbol of disengagement.