These tiny earbuds (and the questions they ask) are actually huge

A few semesters ago, I was lecturing to a class of about 100 students here at the University of Kansas. While presenting, my habit is to wander up and down the walkways and stairways of the lecture hall like a fitness enthusiast trying to get his steps in for the day.

The benefit of my nervous tic is this: my wanderings bring me closer to my students than if I anchored myself at the front of the classroom behind a lectern. On this particular day, that up-close view revealed something about one of my students that I would have otherwise missed.

She had tiny earbuds in her ears. Poking out from under her hair were tiny white speakers — so small that we can’t call them “headphones” any more. After all, they don’t have anything to do with our heads when we bloop them into our outer ears.

I only noticed the earbuds when I pivoted to her to ask her opinion on an example that was projected on the screen. My curiosity about what she thought morphed into curiosity about what she was listening to.

And why was she listening to it in my class?

The fact that I didn’t confront her about the earbuds says something about me as a teacher. It also says something about college campuses, where people wear earbuds as much as anywhere I have lived or visited. In almost choreographed unison, students exit classes, meetings and buildings while reaching into their pockets to find their Bluetooth earbuds. One for each ear. Hit play on the music.

Solitary auditory clouds form around each student.

Such public and widespread use of earbuds has crept into locations we would never have expected. A few years ago, I heard a man conducting a work meeting while using a urinal at the airport. He even flushed. I was so surprised that I told the next 50 people what I saw. Today, that anecdote is commonplace.

Just this week, I have seen people with earbuds listening to who-knows-what while others are speaking to them, during mindless tasks at work and during meals with others. Most startling, I have seen people listening to something else entirely while interacting with a client, whether at a restaurant or here at the university.

The size of earbuds leads many people to believe they aren’t distracted — and that the accessory is not distracting.

“It’s not like I am wearing a huge set of noise-canceling headphones,” they seem to say. “I am just wearing these little things.”

This excuse ignores how earbuds encourage our sensory distance from others. To hear a Taylor Swift song in one ear and the words of your co-worker in the other is to have your attention divided.

We might be tempted to simply invite more sights and sounds into our world. We watch sports on TV with our phone in our hand for social media. We side-watch “Sex in the City” while doing homework. We listen to Beyonce while reading Karl Marx.

However, each stimulus that we invite into our perception not only stimulates but also blocks part of the real world. My student from the lecture hall might not have lost much from popping in her earbud that day (especially because it was me lecturing), but something was lost.

Along with that divided attention, truly quiet time is evaporating. When I drive to campus, I listen to podcasts through the car speakers. When I walk to my office, I wear earbuds with a comedian barking at me. When I get to my office, instrumental music plays through my office speakers. The routine is so ingrained that yesterday, when a co-worker ended our conversation by leaving my office, I reflexively reached for my earbuds.

We are curating omnipresent soundtracks to our days, with little or no relief. Even when we sleep, we cue the white noise.

Quiet time itself has been silenced. Many of us habitually seek noise when quiet would be just as good.

So, yes, it’s great that during my idle time I am listening to podcasts that deliver an Ivy League course on the Early Middle Ages. But is learning about the Merovingians actually better than hearing the voices of the people in my workplace, on my campus or in my home? Would I be better off hearing the proverbial bird chirping on my stroll down the idyllic campus sidewalk?

It’s a constant decision between real-life quiet and curated sound piped into our heads. That choice mirrors many other decisions that technology is presenting at the moment. Real life competes with an on-demand comforting world.

How do we choose between the bleak realism of the evening news and the fantastical comfort of our favorite show? Should we opt for the tumult and energy of a thriving office or the calm and predictable cocoon of our home office? Should our middle schoolers get out of the house and plunge into the social uncertainty of meeting up with one another? Or, should we let them retreat into the familiar landscape of video games?

Framed that way, the questions seem huge.

But those profound questions come in a small package: the two little earbuds sitting here on my desk and the split second decision of whether to listen to them, or the world around me.

Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.