Everywhere I look, people are scrambling to fill every second with noise. Music while showering. Podcasts while walking. TikToks while waiting 30 seconds in line. God forbid you sit in silence for even a moment, you might accidentally have a thought.
And it’s not just boredom they’re avoiding. It’s like some people genuinely can’t handle being alone. No plans for the night? Panic. No one to talk to for a weekend? Existential crisis. They act like solitude is some kind of failure or punishment instead of just… existing with yourself.
I get that we all need people. I’m not pretending to be some monk. But if the idea of being alone, or not being constantly stimulated, sends you into a spiral, maybe the issue isn’t the silence.
Some of you don’t need more noise. You need to sit still and let the dust in your brain settle. It’s not going to kill you.
Unless it actually does, in which case I take this back.
Edit:
To clarify, it’s not about hating music or thinking people shouldn’t enjoy it or themselves out with other people. The point is more about how some people use constant noise (music, podcasts, whatever) as a way to avoid being alone with their thoughts. And when you’re always running from your own mind, you’re not really processing anything. That avoidance can build up, and when the distractions stop, even for a second, it spirals into negativity or anxiety.
Being alone with your thoughts can suck sometimes, yeah. But it’s also where real growth happens. You figure things out. You face things. And if you never give yourself that space, you never really deal with it, you’re just delaying it.
Distraction feels better. But avoidance isn’t peace.
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Maybe slience is boring and ppl like to fill silence with stuff they enjoy
I think it is pretty sad. Many people just are to accustomed to it
I think for some, silence can be overwhelming as they have to sit with reality. That’s definitely not the case for all, and I do think people need to just exist sometimes.
My brain seems intent on torturing me. If I give it a moment’s peace, it finds the opportunity… fuck that.
Not that deep. I just like music and am happy to listen to it for 14 hours a day
You are under the impression that people can’t think while engaging in such activities. Its the opposite. People are so used to having noise and multitasking that things that don’t capture all their attention divide their focus. I watch tv shows while cleaning. I listen to podcasts while walking. That’s because I can actually comprehend them. And not filling the time with things I can comprehend feels like a waste. Its like simply sitting. Why would I simply sit, when I could sit AND engage with something?
Now don’t get me wrong. Pure silence and isolation is great too. Its very relaxing especially when you’re tired and exhausted. But you don’t really see people when they are that tired or exhausted often, do you?
“You might accidentally have a thought”
All that time………..that I have to look up!
Damn it!
If something is playing I need background sounds, nature sounds, nice fan moving etc… dead quiet gets a bit to hummy.
However, when in public I like to hear the world around me and never use full headphone. (one earbud would be okay if I wanted to)
Most people talk when they have nothing to say.
— Megan McCafferty
This is true like I hear people saying they have there AirPods on 12 hours a day and I was like how can that be good for you?
I don’t like silence because I start to hear whispers.
So when you hear something do you just… stop thinking? You might want to get that checked out…
It’s addiction, and a carefully planned one
I listen to music while I shower because if I don’t I’ll stare off into space thinking of everything wrong with me and then 30 minutes later all I’ve done is sat under hot water , my skin is red and I haven’t washed my hair or my body
You may be terrified to know that a lot of people don’t even have an internal monologue. They have to fill the silence because thats all it is, SILENT in their brain.
This is so true, atleast for me. I need to play music or something all the times… Brushing my teeth, toilet/bath, cooking, walking, riding the bus. It’s like I can’t function without background noise. It’s not any condition but I unknowingly trained my brain. Trying to get over with this.
That’s from over-stimulation.
If they aren’t looking at something or listening to something, their brain shuts down.
My nephew was like that when he first moved in with us.
Say we went for a car ride. He would immediately pull out his phone (he actually watched it while walking to the car and taking forever to get in) to watch videos. Any time I took it away, he would be asleep within a minute or two, because his brain wasn’t being stimulated and it would just shut down.
Now over a year later and we’ve made a lot of progress on this.
I feel like it’s more common for people to act like modern society is uniquely destructive for benign reasons
People used to fill their time with reading and art for all of history, is it the literal addition of sound that you think is the problem?
Content makes the voices go away
I spend most of my day to day life in complete silence, aside from a fan or air conditioner going to drown out everyone else’s noise.
I fucking love silence.
It’s extremely popular opinion
I completely agree! It’s like some people need to be constantly entertained. I have heard first-hand from a lot of people that if they sit in silence they’ll start thinking negatively. I’m the opposite – I’m introverted, love peace and quiet, rarely get bored and in fact, I get very overwhelmed easily. I’m very content with not much going on but I also get overstimulated so it has its pros and cons.
Blame it on tinnitus. Pretty much everyone has hearing damage now and the only way to survive without going insane is constant activity to drown it all out
It’s also unnatural for me to be cloistered in a warehouse 40 hours a week. Sure the constant stimulation might be bad for my head but so is the deafening lack of stimulation Id receive otherwise.
Silence is torture because then I’m starting to overthink
I would argue self-reflection is what most people fear
Because then they need to actually work on their problems, or face some worries
It’s why so many people need some kind of noise or conversation to sleep to now
People are generally OK with silence if they are busy doing something demanding, but yeah so many people need constant dopamine
It’s why literacy is tanking in kids
You know, I’m gonna send this to my husband, he asks me all the time why I don’t have YouTube play while I do the dishes or while I’m cooking dinner. I genuinely enjoy the silence, just letting my adhd wander and see where my brain goes. Plus, when you’ve lived I houses with constant noise, it’s nice to have even a moment of blissful silence
I wear noise cancelling headphones to drown out the noise around me. Sometimes, especially when I’m at work or catching an early train to work, I have them switched on with nothing playing, just to enjoy the silence.
Dont assume just because someone has headphones or earbuds, that there’s anything playing through them.
Or I just like podcasts… is that not allowed
The ability to tolerate solitary silence is one of the main indicators of mental health.
Unfortunately a lot of people under 30 are not very mentally healthy.
I want to disagree with this but you’re right 😭 and this ka coming from someone who loves listening to music and YT videos all the time. Sometimes I just keep my noise cancelling headphones on without listening to anything lol. The silence and head pressure is great for when I need to lock in
Agree 100%. I’m in silence right now and surviving.
exactly
I think that people now have an option that wasn’t available before. I (61) almost always have a noise. It eases the tinnitus noise as well as the constant thought cycling. As a kid I dealt with the thought issues by always having a book with me. Lol nothing to help the tinnitus. The AirPods and noise are a tool.
You’re absolutely not wrong. My ex is like this. The minute he wakes up from bed, he’s got some podcast-style video going on. He takes it to the bathroom to pee, then into the kitchen to make breakfast. He does work-from-home as a call centre agent so every free moment between calls, he’s playing a video. Lunch break? Video. And in some cases, he’ll put on a podcast and then play a mobile puzzle game because even just sitting still to listen to his podcast is too much. From the minute he wakes until he’s laying in bed to sleep, there’s a podcast or video playing. They were always at a somewhat loud volume, too.
When I would ask him to turn it down, it would take several barks of, “Can you turn it down, please?!” for him to even hear me and turn it down. It was difficult to have conversations because he’d have to stop his podcast or video to reply.
If for some reason he wasn’t able to play a podcast/video, like his phone battery was dead or something, he’d whistle loudly or hum loudly or make random silly noises loudly.
I truly believe it’s because being alone with his personal thoughts was just too awful a prospect. It was one of the many reasons I had to leave him. I enjoy occasional silence! 😩
I like to walk and sit in the sofa with music to actually be in my thoughts, i think better with ambient music, maybe im weird.
I have really bad anxiety and for some reason I actually really appreciate silence. I work at a car dealership and one day the radio was broken so there was no music in the showroom and I swear I’ve never had a more productive day.
I felt it in myself a bit, but it wasn’t until I taught 14 year olds a few years ago I realized how bad it’s gotten and how we as humans are in DEEP. Some of them needed 4 things going at once at all times, two screens open on their iPad and their music in their AirPods plus my class. Their brains are supposed to be developing and they’ve got an attention span of a TikTok video, sometimes less. When I would take away tech to try to help them focus they would have meltdowns. So many people can’t just exist anymore and I don’t feel like that’s a good thing.
I have severe trauma, ADHD and anxiety, also I deal with auditory hallucinations. So music and just background noise is very helpful to me. It’s been this way since I was 13. I’m only with being alone, even as an extroverted person. I actually spend time alone and solitude is great, but I can’t have my Brian just roam free. I don’t like those horrible thoughts and memories flashing in my mind. So the constant stimulation works for me, most times.
One thing I personally stopped doing is taking my phone/laptop with me to the bathroom. That requires a couple minutes every day of just sitting in silence and thinking about stuff.
Another thing is walks. Walks are great!
I’m a musician and one of the most important skills is learning when not to play. Some don’t ever figure it out and they are awful to play with.
I grew up in a very loud household – lots of yelling, TV’s always on at max volume, music playing from someone’s room at any given moment. I learned to appreciate the quiet. I also absolutely loathed open office layouts.
I used to be one of those “silence is torture” people… turns out I have pretty bad tinnitus and what I thought was silence wasn’t silence at all and that’s why it hurt. I’m not the brightest bulb
I would say it’s the opposite. I’d say there’s too much silence. For everyone using their airpods, there’s all the people around them listening to silence as the listeners tune out on their technology. This is not a new thing, this love of background noise. Think of all the people that for decades have to have their TV on to go to sleep.
People are so empty inside that they have to fill it from outside. It makes sense in this consumerist society.
Silence is torture cause it shows them that they are just a human like cutout.
Nothing is more annoying when you start to wonder if you can count to 10 in between sentences and realize you can never quite get to it because they won’t shutup
Everybody used to read newspapers. Sometimes I bring a book with me when I know I will have to wait. I feel happy to read the book but I hate that it feels like such a statement. I know people must be thinking, “Wow what is this, the 80’s? He has a BOOK?” So I need some other people to join me in carrying books!
You are speaking my language!
Just this morning I was thinking to myself just how effing noisy the world now is.
I walked into my local supermarket at 8am to get some food for my workday, and it was blaring music and advertising non-stop.
About 10 minutes later I walk into my workplace (a famous Aussie hardware franchise) and there’s already hordes of people and young families, all chitchatting and making noise, and it’s not even 8.30am in the morning yet.
And all I can think is “My goodness. 8.30am in the morning. I’d probably still be in bed if it was my day off. And already ‘the machine’ is up and making a racket. Can this world no longer be still and quiet anymore for even a few seconds? Let alone that early in the morning??”
We are absolutely bombarded with sensory overload nowadays.
No wonder our senses feel frazzled much of the time.
Give it a break, world !!
I don’t personally love true silence. Silence while reading is still something to keep my mind on but the absences of anything is too jarring, for better or for worse(probably worse) in our modern loud world
Just drove 800 miles with a person who could not stay quiet. It was torture.
In the 5th grade we went to a nature reserve. At one point the guide said “we’re going to walk up this section in silence. Too many people are afraid of silence, but it isn’t a bad thing.” That’s stuck with me even 20 years later.
It’s crazy that this post came across my feed because all morning I cleaned and cooked for about 4-5 hours in complete silence! No AirPod in my ear, no checking my phone. Just me and my thoughts and I must say it was therapeutic ❣️Will start doing this more often! Sit with my thoughts.
As someone with tinnitus, I would pay a large sum of money to experience silence.
Well considering approximately 15-25% of people have some level of tinnitus there’s not such thing as silence, if they have to hear constant noise it may as well be something you enjoy like music.
Hm, I like silence when I’m alone hiking/running/walking a lot of the time; it’s nice to be able to just sit with your own thoughts about random stuff for an hour or so. Unless I’m really tired and running, then I need the doom eternal soundtrack to feel epic and not fall over and die 🤣
I like my solitude and my music thank you very much.
Must be nice to hear silence. Those of us with tinnitus don’t get that pleasure. Ill take someone’s annoying TikTok video over the high pitch screaming I would hear otherwise.
I’m guilty of most of these things.
Great post
Guys instead of being so defensive, try it, right now, doesnt take much, 10mins of silence. Im gonna do it the moment I post this.
Silence breeds strength. I would much rather stick to myself than listen to long winded stories from people that have no relevance. Distraction and silence is the answer. Meeting with people is such a chore and I would much rather be doing something I want to do. Silence is Golden.
Society replaced widespread smoking with content addiction
I agree some people really can’t handle being alone with no background noise. My friend is one of those people and it’s super annoying, she’ll hangout with people she barely likes just so she won’t be alone. I like the quiet. I like being alone. I’ll never understand people who need constant noise or attention just to feel alive. It’s like silence threatens their whole sense of self. Learn how to be alone.
Sometimes I tinfoil hat and think that there’s something going on with society. Either mentally, socially, chemically and/or emotionally… maybe all the above. Why do people seem so damned fragile in 2025?
I’m an 80s kid and the stuff that people seem to freak out about today isn’t even a second thought to me.
I broke up with a woman because she was absolutely terrified of silence. If our every waking nanosecond wasn’t filled with conversation something was wrong (“Are you mad about something?!?”) according to her.
I need a daily ration of peace and quiet to survive.
People that always have headphones on kind of annoying me. I know it makes no sense and just shouldn’t care. It’s just strange to me that they can’t exist without music 24/7
Lol, tell someone my age to clean the house or shower without music, just once. They can’t. Let alone drive without music every once in a while. Most of my day is spent in silence, but when I do listen to music, it’s much more impactful. It helps that I am a flip phone user (typing this on my computer)
I feel anxiety at times when it’s dead silence, even at work I need background noise to calm me. One thing I cannot stand the most, is having to hear other people’s conversations not trying to hear it. People especially on the street in public don’t seem to mind their manners about their volume level when interacting with others.
Yes maybe I’m becoming a grumpy old man, but I’m actually able to meditate and process thought with all the “noise” that is distracting to some, but puts me right where I need to be. The TV is on now on Gaia and yet I am able to multi task typing and listening.
There’s a special place in hell for folks that like to blare their shit-ass music while on nature trails and parks.
My MIL suffers from severe ADHD.
She bought a new car recently and the day she bought it she planned to drive from the dealership to the grocery store to pick up stuff for dinner.
Since the car was new, she didn’t know how to turn the radio on or connect to Bluetooth so she was forced to drive in silence and she drove straight home to pick up her headphones because she couldn’t drive in silence for the 5 minutes it took to get to the store.
She said she was going insane in the silence.
Lol I got shit for driving for 1 hours without music lol
It doesn’t need to be quiet for me to (over)think about everything. I need something playing in the background or I will quite literally think myself into a state of panic. So at least for me, yeah, it kind of IS torture.
Silence can be quite rewarding, especially with all the noise in the world.
Take my upvote for what I know is an unpopular opinion, and one which I share with you.