It was page 150 before I found some possibly useful practical advice. Having finished the book a couple of weeks ago, I’d say my life and relationships remain resolutely untransformed. She promises solutions, and the blurb on the back cover declares confidently: “This book will transform your conversations, your relationships and your life.” That is going a little far. The World Health Organisation has discovered that teenagers’ near chronic headphone abuse is ruining their hearing, with 1.1 billion young people at risk of hearing loss Murphy describes them as “generation deaf”. In any case, the world has become so noisy that listening is increasingly a physical challenge sound levels now average 80 decibels at restaurants in the US (while a typical conversation averages about 60 decibels) stores such as H&M and Zara have noise levels up to 90 decibels. is living the dream.” We are wrong to downplay the importance of listening, she argues, reminding us that the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus said: “Nature has given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.” Evolution gave us eyelids so we can close our eyes but no corresponding structure to close off our ears, she adds, suggesting listening is essential to our survival. The very image of success and power today is someone miked up and prowling around a stage or orating from behind a podium.

“Value is placed on what you project, not what you absorb. To listen is to miss an opportunity to advance your brand and make your mark … Listening is often regarded as talking’s meek counterpart,” she writes. Photograph: Mike Segar/ReutersĪnd it’s not just mobile phones that are damaging our capacity to listen, she argues, but a culture of “aggressive personal marketing” where “to be silent is to fall behind. Some shops have noise levels of 90 decibels. He knows precisely what keeps Mom and Dad from listening to him.” “If anyone tells a story longer than 30 seconds, heads bow not in contemplation but to read texts, check sports scores or see what’s trending online.” Even toddlers understand this, she points out, describing a friend’s child who has repeatedly thrown his parents’ mobiles into the toilet. Murphy’s descriptions of modern life are acute. The dubious precision of much of this research is slightly irritating and makes you question the methodology, but clearly something has changed, and no one can really dispute the argument that our affection for our phones is eating into the time that we might previously have spent listening to the people to whom we are closest. A study conducted by Microsoft found that since the year 2000, the average attention span dropped from 12 to eight seconds. Thirteen-year-olds who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of clinical depression by 27% and are 56% more likely to say they are unhappy than their peers who spend less time on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Feeling lonely affects your health as much as being an alcoholic or smoking 14 cigarettes a day, she notes. In a 2018 survey of 20,000 Americans, almost half said they did not have meaningful in-person social interactions meanwhile American life expectancy is declining due to suicide, opioid addiction, alcoholism and other so-called diseases of distress often associated with loneliness. Over the past century, she asserts, the average amount of time people have devoted to listening to one another during their waking hours has gone down by almost half, from 42% to 24%. Like smokers and cigarettes, people get jittery without their phones.”ĭoes this matter? Murphy argues that it does, profoundly, and draws together a barrage of statistics and research to persuade us that we have unthinkingly descended into a dystopian reality. Now “people just as reflexively reach for their phones. Or if they are talking to one another, the phone is on the table as ifa part of the place setting, taken up at intervals as casually as a knife or fork, implicitly signalling that the present company is not sufficiently engaging.” There was a time when, during idle or anxious moments, people reached for a cigarette, she writes. “At cafes, restaurants and family dinner tables, rather than talking to one another, people look at their phones. She sets out the problem in painstaking, depressing detail. This is among the subjects Kate Murphy analyses in You’re Not Listening. Fifteen years later, the preference for phones over humans no longer seems in the least remarkable.

I found their behaviour fascinating and peculiar. He was with a glamorous woman but they weren’t speaking instead they spent the whole evening looking at their phones. A month or so later, I sat near the Indian politician Rahul Gandhi in a restaurant.

I n 2005 I sat opposite someone at a dinner party who spent much of the evening looking at her phone under the table, sending messages and smiling to herself.

Kate murphy you re not listening