Episode 226
Surprise! We’re Talking Less Than Ever!
Did you know that our daily word count is dropping faster than my phone battery at 2%? Yup, we’re talking a whopping 28% decrease in words spoken from 2005 to 2019! Crazy, right? With the pandemic, it’s like we’re communicating through a series of emojis and eyebrow raises now! 🤷♂️ It’s a wild ride from chatting on the phone to staring at it like it’s about to explode. So grab your snacks, sit back, and let’s dive into why we’re all turning into quiet little hermits and how texting has basically become our new best friend!
Takeaways:
- Ever notice how our daily word count is dropping? From over 16,600 to under 12,000, yikes!
- We might as well be communicating via emojis and eyebrow raises now, right?
- Imagine someone pacing in your living room, saying, 'I need 3,000 words before bed!' LOL!
- Texting's replaced casual chats; now a phone call feels like a surprise party gone wrong!
- Attention spans are shrinking, making chats tougher, which leads to even less chatting. It's a wild cycle!
- Soon, we’ll just sit in silence, making eye contact and saying, 'This is nice,' and then go back to texting!
Transcript
It, taste, act.
Speaker A:And you know how something can be both surprising and not surprising at all.
Speaker A:Like when your phone dies at 2%,.
Speaker B:You're like, oh wow, already.
Speaker A:But you've been on TikTok for three hours.
Speaker A:You knew what was up.
Speaker A:Well, this is kind of like that.
Speaker A: According to researchers, in: Speaker A: By: Speaker A:28%.
Speaker A:That's not just a little, little tiny drop.
Speaker A:And that was before the pandemic.
Speaker A:So, you know, post pandemic, I mean, we barely speak at all now.
Speaker A:Some people communicate entirely through emojis and eyebrow raises.
Speaker A:I mean, think about it.
Speaker A:If your, if your phone had a word counter next to your step counter, which one is higher?
Speaker A:I'll tell you, my phone might go, oh, congrats.
Speaker A:You walked 5,000 steps and said hello or hey or wid twice.
Speaker A:I mean, should we.
Speaker A:They tell us we should be aiming for 10,000 steps.
Speaker A:Should we be aiming for 10,000 steps and 10,000 words in a day?
Speaker A:Can you imagine someone pacing in your living room?
Speaker B:I need 3,000 words before bed.
Speaker B:Hello.
Speaker B:Anyone want to talk about the weather?
Speaker A:The biggest reason, of course, is technology.
Speaker A:Moving to texting, emails, social stuff, all online, we've basically optimized human interaction down to the letter K. We used to call each other just to say hello.
Speaker A:Now if someone calls you, you, you stare at your phone like it's a bomb about to explode.
Speaker B:Why are they calling?
Speaker B:This feels urgent.
Speaker B:I don't like it.
Speaker A:Experts are concerned because talking requires you to listen, respond and control your reactions, all within a process that takes about 200 milliseconds.
Speaker A:So that's why we switched to texting.
Speaker A:You can have time to panic and overthink and delete and rewrite and say haha.
Speaker A:When you did not actually laugh.
Speaker A:And of course, it is more common among younger people.
Speaker A:Experts talk about how our attention spans are shrinking, which makes it that much harder to hold conversations, which leads to fewer conversations, which shrinks attention spans even more.
Speaker A:It is like a loop, a very quiet loop.
Speaker A:I guess eventually we'll all just sit across from each other and make eye contact and then say, this is nice.
Speaker A:In the group text.
