We're talking 28% less — and tech is to blame

We've gone quiet — and the numbers don't lie

In 2005, the average person spoke roughly 16,632 words out loud in a given day. By 2019, that number had dropped by nearly 28%. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Arizona tracked this shift by analyzing data from over 2,000 people who recorded audio of their daily lives across 22 different studies. This isn't anecdote — it's a measurable, documented decline.

The culprits aren't hard to spot: ordering food through an app instead of calling, texting instead of talking, async Slack messages replacing actual conversations. Every small technological convenience quietly chipped away at our daily word count. Convenience, it turns out, has a social cost we didn't read the fine print on.

And that was all before COVID hit. The researchers note that pandemic-era isolation, remote work, and the explosion of delivery culture almost certainly accelerated the trend. If this study were updated to 2024, the numbers would likely be grimmer. We're talking less, and we've barely noticed.

This isn't about romanticizing landline calls or face-to-face small talk. Verbal communication has real, documented effects on mental health, language development, and social trust. The uncomfortable question is whether anyone — especially the platforms profiting from our silence — actually wants that conversation to happen. Source: The Verge