Over the last thirty years, the development of mobile music listening devices has served to place growing social barriers between people in public places. We have seen the "boombox" and "Walkman" of the 1980's become the "Discman" and the "Minidisc" of the 1990's and welcomed in the new millennium with its "iPods", "Zunes", "Zen"s and all the others. With each new generation of mobile audio media it becomes more commonplace to see herds of people in public with headphones stuck on or in their ears, completely oblivious to the people around them.

I will concede that I do not believe that these devices have lessened the interaction between people and their immediate social group. To the contrary, I would assert that young people simply pay less attention to the music and less attention to each other. They do not seem to limit their social time.

The big difference is witnessing the use of audio devices in crowd settings. Last year, the New York Times ran an article that cited an increase in theft during commuting times on the city's mass transit network. The increase was directly attributed to people being less aware of their surroundings as a result of iPod use. Think of that. People were so oblivious because of the music in their ears that they didn't notice a pickpocket removing their wallet from their person. That kind of separation is certainly a barrier to human communication.

My conclusion is twofold. As a musician and teacher, I mourn the loss of music as a thing to be concentrated on and listened to for so many people. The new paradigm is listening while doing something else. As a person, I mourn the social courtesies that have and will continue to fall by the wayside as people in crowd settings retreat into their own personal worlds of sound. I do not, however, think that the "loner" idea is completely defensible. As I said before, young people and old people simply seem to split their attention between the music and their surroundings affording each a little less scrutiny. If anyone asked me (which they probably never will) I will vociferously connect this practice of splitting attention with the increase in childhood and adult ADD and ADHD. It is contributor to the over-stimulation and lack of mental control that leads to these diagnoses.

And so, in summary, MP3's: maybe not so good for society, but not responsible for "fueling a breed of loners".

Learn more about this author, Eric Drew.
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