We talk much less to each other than we did 20 years ago. And researchers say that the smartphone is not the only culprit
A study of data from the US, Europe and Australia shows that the average number of words spoken per day has dropped dramatically since 2005 – and the effects on cognitive and social development are only beginning to be understood.
In 2005, the average person spoke about 16,600 words a day. In 2019, the same man spoke only 11,900. A 28% drop in 14 years — the equivalent of 120,000 words lost annually per person.
Or thousands of conversations that never happened. These are the conclusions of a large study conducted by researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Arizona, recently published and based on the analysis of 22 previous studies with more than 2,000 participants between the ages of 10 and 94.
The first reflex is to blame the smartphone and digital messaging. And partly right: the period 2005–2019 coincides exactly with the explosion of SMS, social networks and messaging apps. But the study's lead researcher, Dr. Valeria Pfeifer, warns that the picture is more nuanced.
The fact that people over 25 are also talking less — not just young people — suggests that deeper structural changes are at work: fewer multigenerational households, the decline of religious and civic communities, the disappearance of mundane interactions with strangers — ATMs, door deliveries, online orders. Each of these changes takes a few words out of a person's day.
“Humans have relied on spoken language for over 200,000 years, and we still don't know if a shift to digital communication comes with social costs,” says Dr. Valeria Pfeifer, University of Missouri-Kansas City
The brain needs conversation
The stake is not sentimental. A typical conversation is an intense cognitive exercise: the brain has to listen, process, formulate a response and coordinate speech — all in about 200 milliseconds. Pfeifer says talking develops fine social skills, including a sense of when to intervene and the ability to manage your reactions. Skills Not Cultivated Through Texting.
Concerns are even greater when it comes to children. A separate study at the University of Texas found that mothers say 16 percent fewer words to their babies when using the phone. Research shows that the number of words heard in the first years of life directly influences vocabulary and later school performance.
Worse after the pandemic?
The study stops in 2019 — just before the pandemic and the explosion of generative artificial intelligence. Researchers hypothesize that the trend has intensified in recent years, but there is not yet enough data to quantify it. Pfeifer and colleagues plan to expand the analysis as soon as new records become available.
There is good news, however. Linguist Valerie Fridland of the University of Nevada points out that the data needs to be followed over the longer term before drawing catastrophic conclusions. She signals concrete movements of resistance: parents delaying children's smartphone access, schools banning phones in classrooms, a renewed interest in face-to-face communication.
And the solution, says Pfeifer, doesn't require much effort: “If each of us talked to one more person every day, we could reverse this trend.” A conversation with the barista, with the neighbor, with a colleague that you usually send a message to. 338 more words per day. That would be enough.
