When I was little, I would stay up late reading - squinting under my duvet in an attempt to finish the latest Skullduggery Pleasant or Noughts and Crosses. I don’t doubt this is a fairly universal experience; as children we are basically programmed to love stories, but reading also provided something of an escape. If I was arguing with someone at school, or - heaven forbid - I’d lost my favourite rainbow loom bracelet, reading a book was like a chocolate biscuit, a comfort food before I could reach the snack cupboard. And though I still read, as life became busier and my rucksack grew too full of folders to fit the latest Jodi Picoult novel, I found myself turning to podcasts.
Podcasts are any Gen Z’er’s dream. When there’s too much content on the internet to consume in a lifetime, podcasts allow you to absorb information whilst on the bus, doing the dishes or even (as listeners of ‘The High Low’ admitted) squeeze in a bit of listening whilst you brush your teeth or take the bins out. But, might I tentatively suggest, efficiency is not the reason that 6 million people in the UK are listening to podcasts*. With our generation dubbed the loneliest yet, there is something comforting about having a voice in your ear at all times, of being part of the conversation (albeit a little one sided). Podcasts don’t just stimulate the auditory parts of your brain, they light up all the sensory parts too. When a podcast is playing we don't just listen, we feel like we're in it.
If someone’s first instinct when they feel a bit down or isolated is to plug into a podcast, this must be beneficial. Using an informative or humorous stimulus to keep bad thoughts at bay is definitely not the worst coping strategy, but what happens when we can’t be alone with our own thoughts anymore? I’m in no way exempt from scrolling through Instagram or listening to a podcast when I’m bored, but how often do any of us just not do anything anymore? If I’m going to have a day of ‘doing nothing’ then this means I’ll watch TV, listen to a podcast, play some guitar, maybe walk my dog or grab lunch with a friend. In a culture where we are so infrequently just alone with our thoughts, podcasts (however much I hate to admit it), exacerbate this problem - an intellectual, ‘mindful’ way of getting increasingly less comfortable with our own company.
On World Challenge this summer, the hardest part for me was not the ninety percent humidity or that I was missing Love Island, but the bizarre sensation of just getting bored sometimes. Sitting isolated, with only my thoughts on a 10 hour coach journey whilst everyone else was asleep, or actually writing a diary without stopping and listening to a podcast when I became disinterested halfway through was, sadly, a pretty revelatory experience. I wasn't alone in this: one friend talked about missing Khalid's music more often than she spoke of her family, we had to ‘train’ another girl into not filling every silence, on journeys people grew sentimental about the many miles between them and their airpods (middle class problems?), and books were traded like contraband.
So however much I love listening to a podcast when I’m home alone or doing some menial task, I might try to spend a little less time with another voice in my ears, lest I go too long and forget what my own thoughts sound like.
*in 2018, says Ofcom
By Phoebe Pascoe, LVI
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