By Katelyn Halverson
It's no secret that technology has college students firmly in its grasp. From the moment we first refresh on our Instagram pages in the morning, to the last text we send each night, an endless stream of content sweeps across our vision – and increasingly floods our ears.
I’ll admit, there are few occasions I have left my dorm without a pair of headphones either clamped over my ears or stowed readily in my bag. My walks to class would simply lack their usual charm without listening to a carefully curated playlist, matching my current mood, or voice memos from my friends detailing their latest life updates. Likewise, I much prefer to study with the ambient chatter of some mind-numbing celebrity podcast in the background, than work in silence.
All around me, I observe a similar trend — students strolling absentmindedly through hallways, eating in dining halls or hunched over laptops, cocooned in a state of noise-cancelling bliss. It seems we all collectively prefer to embrace self-selected noise over the natural hum of Cornell’s campus, and it's hardly difficult to see why. In a college environment, where almost every space is shared, wearing headphones creates a small orbit of isolation that is refreshingly our own. There is something strangely comforting in the assurance that at any given moment, I can retreat from college life and dive into an audial world of my choosing. I can mentally transport myself back home, to the passenger seat of my sister’s car, or immerse myself in the plot of a novel, allowing the very landscape before me to fall away. Having access to this kind of escape feels almost necessary for maintaining my peace of mind — in a way, it feels like coming up for air.
There is, of course, a steep tradeoff to the over-ear phenomenon clutching college campuses. Anyone can see that headphones are far more than a concentration tool — they are a social crutch, granting us the ability to tune in or out of the world as we please. While I don't intend to reinforce the rather tired argument that students are becoming less social, conversational and connected to their peers due to the rise of technological addiction, the fact remains that interpersonal interaction in public spaces has become more or less optional with the use of headphones — and it appears that the majority (myself included) have a sneaky tendency to opt out.
You may also notice that social norms have quietly given way to accommodate this shift in college culture. It's no longer considered rude to wear headphones while interacting with a barista to order your morning coffee or sitting amongst classmates waiting for a lecture to begin. Spaces that were once hubs for socialization — dorm lounges, cafeterias, cafes and libraries — no longer carry the same promise once offered to former classes. It’s not altogether uncommon to walk into a room and go completely unnoticed, each person too plugged in to their own devices to pay other people any mind.
Thus, the question poses itself: are headphones becoming just another screen — a filter of human emotion, that is, distilling physiological comfort while insulating us from boredom, discontent and loneliness?
I would argue that yes, they are — and almost as troubling as the screen in your pocket.
The more hours a day we spend locked in our acoustic bubbles, absorbing and reabsorbing our own thoughts, we become further and further removed to the broader Cornell experience. And, may I dramatically add, the very experience of what it means to be human. This is not to say, of course, that it is inherently harmful to listen to your favorite podcasts, records or content on repeat. It is, however, impossible to satisfy a constant craving for entertainment without sacrificing a very critical element of your campus life.
By its very nature, sound is a communal force — its most powerful ability is to bring people together through shared perception. Generations are bonded by the collection of songs we sing and dance to throughout our undergrad years, but the auditory element to our college experience goes far deeper than music. It includes the orchestra of sounds unique to our day-to-day lives, those unique to this very campus: the crackle of dried leaves beneath your step in late fall; the slow patter of rain on a library window; the creak of wooden desks in the stacks; the crisp turn of a stranger’s book; and, perhaps the most notable of them all, the iconic chimes of McGraw Tower. Sounds such as these compose the melodic score backing the memories that will tie us to Cornell after we leave. To block out this noise, incessant and bothersome as it can be, is to erase a richness and texture to our past that cannot be recovered.
As I hope to challenge myself moving forward, I urge readers to start listening: remove your headphones more often and observe all of the small, yet impactful ways your routine — and your relationship to this campus — is altered. Perhaps you will develop a new morning ritual on your walk to class, finally strike up a conversation with a classmate or spark a new friendship in the dining hall. Regardless of the outcome, I am confident we will all discover there is profound gratification to be earned by tuning in to the voices around us — even if we are first met with silence.
Katelyn Halverson is a sophomore in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be reached at kh874@cornell.edu.
