The world is speaking less, losing an average of 338 words a year

People around the world may be speaking less. A recent study found that participants used 338 fewer spoken words on average each year between 2005 and 2019, a decline of 28% over the period.

The drop was sharper among people under 25, who lost an average of 451 words a year. The researchers, led by University of Missouri psychologist Valeria Pfeifer, titled the study “Sliding into silence.” On its face, 338 words amounts to only two or three minutes of conversation. But the figure measures conversations that have disappeared without explaining what they were or who was involved.

The recordings came from the daily lives of 2,197 people aged 10 to 94 in the United States, Europe, Mexico and Australia. Researchers analyzed passively collected environmental audio from 22 studies conducted over the 14-year period. After checking that the decline did not result from a mathematical error, they tested the possibility that people had genuinely begun speaking less.

The change coincided with the rise of digital communication. The researchers said they do not yet know whether digital conversations contributed to the decline in spoken words or whether they can compensate for it. Spoken, face-to-face conversations involve different social and cognitive processes from written exchanges, the study’s authors said, and may offer well-being benefits that apps and social media struggle to replace.

The findings also connect with wider concerns about loneliness, polarization, weakening communities and less frequent friendships. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has treated the decline in conversation and verbal interaction as part of a longer retreat from face-to-face life in the United States. The study leaves open how much of the lost conversation involved friends, family or strangers, and what its individual and social cost may be.

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As psychologists, we would argue that spoken conversations, those that happen face to face, involve different social and cognitive processes from written conversations and can produce well-being benefits that apps and social media can hardly replace.