The Case Against Wearing Headphones in Public

I keep losing my wireless headphones. When I do have them with me, they’re often out of battery. So one day earlier this summer, I decided to ditch them.It felt like a huge step, as I’d long used in-ear tech as a shield from the auditory chaos of London. But what happened felt transformative. I was surprised at how present I was without them. During my first headphones-free commute, I smiled at strangers. I noticed the stops on the train line, something I never do when I rely on an app to tell me when to get off the train through my earphones. That one journey made me wonder if I had accidentally outsourced the joys of my city life to my phone. In 2026, we have become remarkably good at filling every quiet moment: Spotify on the train, podcasts while walking, Google Maps telling us where to go, our phones providing something to look at whenever there’s a lull.The scale of this is striking. Ofcom’s latest research found that 93% of U.K. adults listen to some form of audio every week, and more than a quarter listen to podcasts weekly. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide listen to podcasts. There’s also a fascinating social angle. Research published in the Journal of Experimental...