Why I'm hanging up my headphones after 16 years

There’s a Regina Spektor lyric that, in my angsty adolescence, I held close as my own personal mantra:

‘You spend half of your life trying to fall behind/ you’re using your headphones to drown out your mind’.

I never paid much attention to the first half of the lyric, but as far as my 12-year-old self was concerned, Regina was right about headphones.

I used them to steel myself for the day while walking to the bus stop, or block out the frenzy of feral first-years on the bus.

Wishing myself invisible, I’d surround myself with a musical forcefield as I navigated the school corridors.

And when I got home, I’d lie on my bed, close my eyes and fall into yet more music.

Like some sort of mental health pacifier, the muffle of my earphones soothed my racing thoughts and allowed me to focus on my studies.

My gran would say I was wired to the moon; little did she know I was just wired to my iPod Nano.

And today’s teenagers are no different, with the National Centre for Biotechnology and Information reporting that 80% of 13-18-year-olds listen to music through headphones or earphones for 1-3 hours a day.

Sixteen years down the line since that fateful first set of earbuds, I can’t tell you when music went from a helping hand to a tightly-gripped crutch.

But looking back through photo albums of myself during work days, study sessions, commutes, holidays and shopping sprees, one object makes its presence known loud and clear.

Rebecca sunbathing, circa 2019 – with headphones. Image: Rebecca Baird.

Rebecca studying in Blend, Dundee, in 2021 – with headphones. Image: Philip Samuel.

Rebecca leaving work at The Courier on a chilly 2020 winter’s night – with headphones. Image: Rebecca Baird.

A 2017 bedroom jam – with headphones. Image: Rebecca Baird.

So this summer, I did something I haven’t done since the day I moved to Dundee: I left the house without my headphones.

It was an accident, of course – I left them in another bag, and didn’t have time to turn around. So for the first time in years, I walked to work with nothing to listen to.

I just…heard.

Life, unplugged

And I’d love to wax lyrical about the sudden symphony of birdsong, and the way the rush of faraway traffic sounds like the sea, and the life-affirming pitter-patter of rain on windows.

But reader, I can’t hear a bloody thing.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I can hear lots of things. In one ear.

My left ear, however, still thinks it is being smothered in the sound-swallowing embrace of my noise-cancelling Bose bad boys. Everything’s muted, muffled and, at times, ringing.

It’s startling and little scary, learning that those ‘turn volume down’ warnings were not to be brushed aside as brazenly as I did.

But it seems that I’m one of 1.7% of people worldwide who is starting to experience noise-induced hearing loss due to repeated, long exposure to sounds above 85db – also known as the consequences of my actions.

So that’s one good reason to severely cut down on my near-constant auditory assault.

Among other reasons are ear sweat (it’s a thing), headphone hair (think Alice band imprint, all day every day) and many a broken necklace chain after slinging the things round my neck when they’re not on my head.

Joy gets muffled along with everything else. Image: Rebecca Baird.

But my biggest motivator for pressing mute on my audio consumption is simply that my headphones are no longer drowning out my mind, a la Regina.

Instead, I’ve finally come to understand the first half of that lyric, about trying to fall behind.

You can’t cancel out the noise in your head

When I have my headphones on, I’ll spend five minutes picking the perfect playlist for a 10-minute walk.

I’ll find myself getting dragged down memory lane by songs with strong associations, or spiralling out about specific lyrics to the point where they’re all I can talk about (nudge nudge).

Suddenly the noise isn’t being cancelled out from the world; it’s being created inside my head.

And instead of being calmer and more focused, I find myself more anxious, more depressed and totally scattered.

Haunted by headphones: Rebecca was unsurprisingly attracted to headphone disco when she visited V&A Dundee’s Night Fever exhibition back in 2021. Image: DC Thomson.

Turns out, it’s not just me. A study published in Noise and Health in 2021 concluded that earphone users tested higher for anxiety and depression when compared to non-users, particularly those aged 21-40.

Of course, there’s an argument that that’s a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, and that those with anxiety and depression are more likely to crave the isolating and calming effects of headphones.

But I coming round to the idea that headphones may be more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to my mental health.

Since that day I forgot my headphones, I’ve shifted my default to being naked-eared, and have only donned the cushioned clamps if there’s been something specific I want to listen to.

The result, to no one’s surprise?

I can hear myself think again.