Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Round Table.
Coming up:
Add up all the micro-conversations you didn't have today: the barista, your neighbor,
the colleague you passed in the hall without stopping to say anything.
Individually, nothing.
Collectively, though, thousands of words have disappeared, and a new study suggests that that is the new normal.
But there's a bit of an uncomfortable part: no one decided that this should happen.
So what did we trade away without noticing at all?
And is there any reason to want it back?
It's a strange thing to think about that humans are using 3,000-plus fewer words a day
when compared to the way we used to speak.
It's not because we've become suddenly quiet by nature,
people didn't just suddenly decide to not talk anymore,
but it has much to do with our lifestyles and the tools that we use in our daily lives.
So let's talk about this study and find out what they found.
Yeah, this is, well, I'll share my personal observation later on,
but here it comes with a huge, almost accidental discovery from a psychologist at the University of Arizona.
Well, he wasn't really trying to study a decline in talking at all.
Actually, he was simply trying to repeat an older study back in 2007 about just how men and women talk.