09-07-2025
How wireless headphones turned Britain into a nation of zombies
'Excuse me?!' I shouted at the woman whose wallet had fallen from the back pocket of her jeans on a busy London street. She didn't turn around, so I ran forward, picked it up and hurried after her. 'Excuse me, you dropped your wallet!' No reaction. I tapped her on the shoulder and she whipped her head around, angry and defensive. Now I could see that she was wearing earbuds, which had been hidden from behind by her long hair.
I smiled, held out her purse and clearly mouthed, 'YOU DROPPED THIS'. She took the wallet, robotically, but did not remove the earbuds, smile or speak. As she strode away – still wrapped in her own audio bubble – I doubt she heard my passive aggressively muttered 'You're welcome'.
Such rudeness existed before the rise of headphones, of course. But now so many people use them in public (48 per cent of adults in Britain use them for at least two hours a day according to a 2019 study by Audio Analytics) you can sometimes be left feeling that the basic rules of such social interactions are being eroded and the potential pleasures of them lost.
Many of my middle-aged friends tell me they find headphones 'essential' for surviving modern city life. They reasonably argue that shutting out the cacophony of strangers keeps them calm. One jokes that she uses hers to insulate herself from the demands of her own family. Another says they're 'invaluable' when it comes to focusing on her work. My autistic friends rely on noise-cancelling headphones to navigate a range of stressful situations. 'I wear really chunky, obvious headphones,' says Lynne, 50, 'to make it clear that I want to be left alone.'
I'm not immune to the appeal. I'll catch up on podcasts while walking my dog over the fields. At the gym there is no way I'd pound my way through the pain and tedium of the treadmill without the distraction of motivating podcasts and audiobooks. But if we drown out all of life's affable, mundane chit-chat and only read the more extreme opinions expressed online, aren't we making ourselves more – not less – anxious?
Dr Jim Taylor, a psychologist and author based in San Francisco, warns that headphones are a 'purgatory'.
'They prevent us from connecting to the outer world, as well as shutting us off from our inner worlds: our thoughts, our emotions, our physiognomy [the art of 'reading' people's faces],' he says. 'We're neither here nor there, trapped in a limbo where our minds our being filled. We're not developing self-reflection, self-awareness, self-control.' He believes earbuds are a form of 'emotional anaesthetic' which can cause 'irreparable damage' to us as individuals and as a society.
Joyce, 62, who works on the checkout at my local Co-op, agrees with him. Always game for a gossip as she rings up my groceries, she tells me that 'people using headphones seldom acknowledge staff here as human beings anymore. They don't respond to our greetings or reply to our questions.' These customers, standing only a few feet from her, share the same space but are in an entirely different world, nodding to the beat of music she can't hear or laughing in her face at podcasters' jokes from which she is excluded.
'It can make you feel invisible.' She sighs. 'I live alone and so I have always enjoyed passing the time of day with customers. Lots of our older customers do still like a chat. We've got a couple who are deaf, but that is very different – they still look for a connection and make eye contact. But some teenagers treat me like I'm an automated checkout.'
While I hope I've taught my own teenage children never to behave in this rude way in such situations, at home it can often feel like they're entirely cut off from me by their headphones. It's hard enough to communicate with self-absorbed and grunt-prone adolescents at the best of times. Their brains are already wired to shut us out. Headphones exacerbate the problem and escalate conflict.
I love to cook, so by the time I call my kids for dinner I'm usually in a good mood and will summon them to the table in my most Mary Poppins-y voice. But by the time I've called them, unheeded, seven times and the dinner's gone cold, I'll be snapping and snarling like Cruella de Vil.
'Why are you always so angry?' they'll ask, bewildered. For a generation that's always going on about 'feeling seen' it's maddening that they don't seem to realise it's equally important to 'feel heard'. I regularly pass groups of teens at the park, sharing picnic blankets and snacks but all plugged into different soundtracks. Together, alone.
Nivedita Nayak, a clinical psychologist, believes that 'persistent headphone use is quietly reshaping how people engage or fail to engage with one another in everyday life'. In her sessions she's spotted a recurring pattern of clients using headphones 'not just for music or podcasts but as a tool to withdraw from their surroundings emotionally'.
Nayak says this pattern is especially pronounced among teenagers, who often report that wearing earbuds helps them 'avoid awkward conversations' or 'tune out the world', even in group settings like school lunch breaks or family dinners. One 17-year-old student came to therapy after experiencing repeated conflicts with peers and teachers. He described feeling 'drained' around people and relied heavily on music to get through the school day, wearing earbuds even while walking with friends or sitting in class. Over time, his teachers noticed he stopped engaging entirely during group discussions, and his parents reported that even at home, he would keep one earbud in during meals, nodding but not listening. Like so many coping strategies, his headphones had started to create more problems than they were solving.
According to a 2022 survey by the Campaign to End Loneliness, 49.6 per cent of adults in the UK reported feeling lonely occasionally, sometimes, often or always. Another survey in 2021, by audio firm Jabra, found that UK headphone users wore them for on average 58 minutes a day, with 37 per cent keeping them on to deliberately avoid talking to others.
Dee Johnson, a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, working in Essex, says: 'I know people are tired of hearing about the fallout from the pandemic, but the isolation and anxiety people experienced during that time saw many people lose – or not develop – social skills. I was already seeing clients who would prefer to email or text colleagues sitting in the same room as them at work. Earbuds make that more common and the less people talk the lower their confidence gets.
'If your head is in a different place to the people around you then you'll miss non-verbal cues. It reduces our ability to develop listening skills and emotional intelligence. We are pack animals but, increasingly, we're chasing to separate ourselves from the herd and this is making us unhappy.' In family situations, she says, this can 'cause resentment and prevent us from developing conflict resolution skills'.
During addiction therapy sessions at the Priory Hospital group, Johnson sees people going through rehab with their earbuds in, trying to shut everything out. '[Earbuds] can be helpful and I will remind clients it can be good to go for a walk with some good tunes on,' she says. 'If you're autistic or anxious and your headphones get you through a supermarket trip? Great! But we need to use them in moderation or that sense of control over our soundtrack, the protection from boredom, the false security you get from living in that audio bubble and not being challenged – by your own thoughts or anybody else's – can become the next addiction.'
Johnson says she has 'even had clients walk into therapy with their earbuds in. They're so used to wearing them they've become part of their bodies.' But take them off in Johnson's seaside therapy room in Leigh-on-Sea and 'you can listen to the breeze, the sea, the gulls… catch those funny snatches of overheard conversation. Those moments stimulate the brain and spark creativity. They can also do the opposite and connect us with peace.' She points out that 'our primeval brain knows we ideally need all our senses to stay safe, so shutting some down can lead to deeper-seated fears'.
Those fears are founded in reality. Most drivers will have slammed on the brakes at some point for a jogger or cyclist who has swerved, obliviously, into their path while headphones prevented them from tuning in to the sound of traffic. With electric vehicles now so quiet, it's even more important for us to stay alert for traffic.
Yet the 2019 survey by Audio Analytics found that a staggering 24 per cent of adults in Britain admitted they had put themselves in danger over the previous 12 months when wearing headphones or earphones while walking, running or cycling.
The company's research found that the risks were higher for younger people with 37 per cent of those aged between 18 and 34 admitting to finding themselves in at least one hazardous situation over the previous year, with many doing this multiple times. Survey data was not collected for under-18s, but it's assumed that the risks are even higher for school-age children, who often use headphones.
'Learning to live as happy, healthy human beings in a complex society is a skill,' says Taylor. 'And it's one the younger generations are not learning.' He's also the parent of two teenagers, who he says are not allowed to wear earbuds if there is anybody else in the room. 'Because, yes, they are pretty good at texting. But the headphones are an extension of the screens you see people all staring at on the bus so they don't have to make conversation.'
Today's teenagers, he adds, have been raised in a divided world where they fear strangers may be hostile and so don't take the spontaneous social risks required to discover that their fellow bus passengers might be friendly or interesting. They miss opportunities to make friends, fall in love, have a laugh and discover, as American writer Bill Nye once wrote, that 'everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't'.
