These audio gadgets may look good but the physical, emotional and social costs are potentially damaging
There has been much talk of late about how the streetscape of our towns and cities, not to mention our workplaces, have drastically changed since lockdown. But the biggest change, despite footfall finally starting to rise and working from home slowly tailing off, is the silence.
It is not that we have suddenly become a more reserved country, or even that we have been struck dumb by the slew of problems that are confronting the nation and the world right now. No, it is the ubiquity of a generation of digital natives listening to devices in their ears that put them at one step removed for everyone else around them.
They split into two distinct groups – those sporting little white cordless earbuds and those more flamboyant types in outsized headphones who could easily be mistaken for a 1970s DJ fresh out of the radio studio.
Both, though, are relying on wireless and Bluetooth connections to funnel sound into their ears and cut out the voices of those around them – and by association eschewing any connection with others as they go about life utterly closed in their own separate world. We are, in short, and in short time, becoming a headphone nation.