The smart phones in our pockets aren’t just the bridges into the world at large, but they’re also music libraries we carry everywhere we go. It’s so common to see people strolling, headphones in ear, zoned out and into their music.
We can connect to any music we want at any time, but the cost of this is detachment from our immediate world around us.
1. You can’t hear cars coming at you.
To start off simply, it’s just much safer to walk around without your headphones in. Even if you’re completely aware of the stoplights, you could still potentially be in danger.
Cars aren’t magically forced to follow stoplights, and let’s face it, there are some pretty awful drivers out there. If you’re walking across an intersection blasting that new Tay song, you’re not going to hear the car that’s barreling towards you.
2. You can’t hear the people around you.
Now, I’m not one of those fear mongering people who like to instill a general distrust of others, but it’s an unfortunate truth that people get mugged or pickpocketed late at night.
Humans have a pretty good 6th sense that clues us in when we think someone is following us a little too closely. However, if you’re tuning out the world with your amazing iTunes collection, you’re inhibiting your stalker senses and making yourself vulnerable.
3. Headphones overuse is bad for your ears.
Our eardrums are delicately tuned instruments meant for the subtlest nuanced vibrations. When we blast Ke$ha (guilty) and other pop divas in our ears, we overload that gossamery tool. There’s no such thing as overtime pay for eardrums, so it’s probably best to let them breath now and then.
4. We are losing the ability to hear.
According to sound experts, we’re beginning to lose our ability to hear real world sounds, like the wind rustling through trees or the birds overhead. The constant use of headphones is making it easier for us to tune out these intrinsic life noises even when we aren’t plugged into our music.
While this phenomenon also applies to things like airplanes and car horns, it more importantly dampens our ability to tune into rain lapping at our windows and other natural noises. These are the ingredients of poetry and art! How sad it would be to have their presence in our lives diminished by even the slightest degree?
5. You miss the little things.
Listening to music while walking down the street pulls you out of the world. After sight, hearing is the most important sense that engages us with the external world. If we can see but lack the sound-correlated ambience, we become dissociated. It’s like we’re putting our minds on autopilot, and just going through the motions of daily life.
No matter how many times you take the same route to work or walk down the same street, I guarantee that every single time will present you with variegated sound sensations. On that particular day, you’ll miss the splatter of the water dripping off the roadside potted plants, or the clinking of windchimes above a storefront.
It’s the little things like these that key us into the individual beauty that unfolds in every moment.
6. You risk coming off as rude.
Even if you’re the friendliest person to ever grace the world with your existence, headphones make you unapproachable. It makes it that much harder for people to call out to you. If that’s your plan (and I get it, everyone needs to make themselves unapproachable sometimes), then you do you.
But if that isn’t your end goal, be mindful. Your headphones put up a wall around you.