Turn Off the Music and Face the Music

“Hey Bob!” I say happily. No response. “Bob?” I repeat, a little louder, but he still doesn’t so much as glance in my direction. When I catch up with him and I see the little white ear buds and I know why. Bob couldn’t hear me because he was listening to music.

As music-listening technology gets more and more advanced, people are becoming less and less social. It’s not just Bob. Many students slip on their headphones and crank up the volume on their iPods the second class is over. In doing this, they become almost entirely unapproachable and eliminate any potential for post-class discussion. “Dude I just bombed that quiz…I can’t believe we have to write that paper for next class…” This is quality bonding time that is often wasted because a student cannot last a moment longer without having their eardrums bombarded by Beethoven.

The post-class headphone routine is even more unfortunate if a headphone-free and headphone-wearing student happen to be walking in the same direction as each other. “You’re walking to Foss? Oh, me too,” the headphone-free student often finds themselves thinking. “I’ll just walk a couple steps behind you awkwardly and we won’t talk...” It is also embarrassing if the headphone-free student is not aware that their classmate is wearing headphones, attempts to talk to them, and is publicly ignored.

Maybe people like Bob hide behind their headphones because they are shy and fear social interaction. To this, I say they need to take off the headphones even more. They need to learn how to have a casual conversation with a fellow classmate, if not because they want to make friends because this is a skill that will surely come in handy in the real world of networking and job interviews.

Maybe people like Bob are misanthropes who cannot stand listening to the inane discussion that goes on in between classes. Maybe Bob hates me and was pretending not to notice me on purpose… but I’m going to go ahead and blame technology on this one.

Maybe people like Bob just love music. So much so that they apparently can’t go a second without it. But the music will always be there. The cute girl/boy in their biology class who has been hanging back after class hoping to talk to them will not.