We Are Talking Less, and the Silence Has a Shape

How many words do you utter on a typical day? Whatever number you reach for is almost certainly smaller than it was a decade ago. Between 2005 and 2019, the daily count of spoken words logged in a large U.S. study fell by 28%, with the per-day total plummetingplummet: To drop swiftly, in a direct manner; to fall quickly — 暴跌 from roughly 16,600 to under 12,000.

The result was so unexpected that the lead researcher, Matthias Mehl of the University of Arizona, initially refused to believe it and asked his team to verifyverify: to make sure or demonstrate that something is true, accurate, or justified — 核实；验证；证实 the figures. Once they did, the picture grew sharper rather than softer: spoken output had declined steadily, year after year, across the entire study periodstudy period: the span of time covered by a research study — 研究期. Working with Valeria Pfeifer of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Mehl drew the finding from audio samples collected at random moments in the daily lives of more than 2,000 contributorscontributor: A person who contributes something, such as money, ideas, or written material. — 贡献者；捐款者；投稿人, mostly Americans aged 10 to 94.

Mehl is a social psychologysocial psychology: the branch of psychology that studies how people think, feel and behave around others — 社会心理学 researcher, not a futuristfuturist: An adherent to the principles of the artistic movement of futurism — 未来主义者, and he is careful not to overclaimoverclaim: To claim too much for something; to make exaggerated claims about its importance, effects, or accuracy — 夸大其词；过度声称. Even so, he is willing to speculate about why the curve points so firmly downwarddownward: Toward a lower level, whether in physical space, in a hierarchy, or in amount or value — 向下. Three forces, he argues, are doing most of the work. The first is the rise of unspokenunspoken: (sometimes postpositive) Not formally articulated or stated; implicit or understood — 心照不宣的；不言而喻的, screen-based communication, particularly among younger users. Although every age group spoke less by the end of the study, the decline was steepest under 25, the cohortcohort: A group of people supporting the same thing or person — 支持者群体 most likely to swap conversation for messaging appsmessaging apps: phone applications people use to send written messages — 即时通讯应用.

The second pressure is social isolationisolation: the state of being separated from others, or the process of setting something apart — 隔离；孤立social isolation: being cut off from contact with other people — 社交孤立. Time-use surveys since the early 2000s show a marked increase in hours spent alone and a correspondingcorresponding: That have a similar relationship — 对应的 fall in social engagementengagement: Active involvement or participation in an activity, cause, or interaction. — 参与；投入；约定social engagement: active participation in social activities and contacts — 社交参与, both at home and at work. As remote work expanded, so did the number of working days on which a person might exchange almost no spoken words with a colleague. Less time together, Mehl notes, almost mechanically translates into fewer words spoken.

The third pressure is subtler. Contactless payments, self-checkout aisles, and digital ordering systems have quietly stripped small talksmall talk: light, informal conversation, often with people you barely know — 闲聊 out of the public spaces where it used to live. We can buy groceries without greeting a cashier and order a meal without addressing a waiter. Each individual saving is trivial; in aggregateaggregate: a whole or total — 总计, Mehl warns, these conveniences may have rendered our social lives noticeably more rudimentaryrudimentary: Of or relating to one or more rudiments — 基本要素的 even as they have rendered our errands more efficient.

Why should any of this matter? Because text, for all its convenience, is a thinner channel. It carries the words but strips out the non-verbalverbal: relating to or in the form of words, especially spoken rather than written — 口头的；言语的；文字的 cuesnon-verbal cues: communication signals that don't use spoken words, such as gesture, expression and posture — 非语言信号, the body languagebody language: the gestures, posture and facial movements that reveal what someone feels — 肢体语言, and the prosodicprosodic: Relating to prosody — the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech — 韵律的；语调的 elementsprosodic elements: the rhythm, stress and intonation patterns of speech — 韵律要素 that listeners read alongside the message. Emojis paper over some of the resulting ambiguity, but they cannot reproduce a sigh, a shrugshrug: to raise and lower the shoulders to show indifference or lack of knowledge — 耸肩（表示不知道或无所谓）, or a half-second pause. Spoken exchange, Mehl argues, is perceived as a gestaltgestalt: Shape, form — 形态；外形, and that integrated whole is what generates feelings of recognition and belonging.

The cost may be steepest where the loss looks smallest. Gillian Sandstrom, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sussex, has spent years studying interactions her field once dismissed. Where most researchers focused on the emotional weight of inner-circle relationships among family and closeclose: Closed, shut — 关闭的 friends, Sandstrom has tracked the outer-circle exchanges with neighbours, an acquaintance at the gym, or a stranger in a queuequeue: A line of people, vehicles or other objects, in which one at the front end is dealt with first, the one behind is dealt with next, and so on, and which newcomers join at the opposite end (the back) — 队伍. Far from being expendableexpendable: Regarded as not worth preserving or saving; able to be sacrificed — 可牺牲的；可舍弃的, she finds, these impromptu and often fleeting conversations make a measurablemeasurable: Able to be measured — 可测量的 contribution to our well-being and to a wider sense of belongingsense of belonging: the feeling that you are accepted as part of a group or community — 归属感.

Sandstrom describes herself as an introvert who once dodged chitchat at every opportunity. Her data persuaded her otherwise. People consistently report that brief exchanges with strangers go better than they expected, leaving them in a brighter mood and slightly more convinced that other people are decent. Most of us, she adds, need a small nudge into the discomfort, because regular practice is the only reliable contributor to getting better at it.

If Mehl is right that spoken interaction is shrinkingshrink: to become or make something smaller in size, amount, or value — 缩小；收缩；减少 on every front, the larger question is what we lose alongside the words. Sandstrom's answer is the hardest to put on a graph, but also, she suspects, the most important: the everyday confidence that we belong somewhere, that conversation is available to us, and that the people on the other side of it are likely to be alright. That convictionconviction: A formal declaration that someone is guilty of a criminal offence; a firmly held belief or opinion. — 定罪；判罪；坚定信念 is built, sentence by ordinary sentence, in exactly the small interactions now slipping out of our days.