The "Walkman Effect"

The psychologist Stanley Milgram wrote an essay in the journal Science in 1970 called "The Experience of Living in Cities".  In the essay, he talked about the concept of overload from systems theory, which refers to a system's inability to process inputs from the environment when there are too many inputs for the system to cope with.  He wrote, "City life, as we experience it, constitutes a continuous set of encounters with overload, and of resultant adaptations...One adaptive response to overload is the allocation of less time to each input."  He then referred to the sociologist, Georg Simmel, who pointed out as long ago as 1903 that individuals who live in cities come into contact with so many other individuals that in order to conserve their cognitive attention, they largely keep to themselves or maintain only superficial relationships with their acquaintances compared to those individuals who live in more rural areas.  

We've known for a long time that individuals who live in cities tend to keep to themselves, at least when compared to those individuals living in rural areas (see my recent post, "The Quiet Commute").  While cognitive overload is an important factor, what's also clear is that technology has also had an adverse impact on how we interact with one another.  The writer Jonathan Haidt in particular writes about the dangers of social media and the adverse impact that social media has had upon society today in his book, The Anxious Generation.  Haidt's book is still relatively new (it was published in 2024), but the concerns about technology's adverse impact on society are not - look no further than the Sony Walkman, a portable cassette player first introduced in the late 1970's.  

At the time it was first introduced, the Sony Walkman was revolutionary in concept.  Shuhei Hosokawa published an essay about the Walkman and its impact on society in the journal Popular Music in 1984 entitled "The Walkman Effect".  Hosokawa claimed (and I think he was correct) that the Walkman created a private auditory space within public spaces, allowing users to detach from their environment and mentally withdraw into a private world of music.  

Of interest, the original model of the Walkman played cassette tapes and included a second earphone jack as well as an extra set of headphones.  There was a curious orange button labeled "Hot Line" that when pushed, allowed the two users to speak to each other through a microphone.  According to Akio Morita, one of the Sony co-founders, the company was anxious about the solitary nature of their new product, and they included the orange button to provide an emergency "share" feature.  

In other words, the company that released the Sony Walkman was concerned enough that the new technology would further isolate its users that they created a feature to try to create "togetherness".  Ironically, the orange button was soon removed and the Sony Walkman became hugely popular, primarily because of its solitary nature (hence, the "Walkman Effect").  

I remember when the Sony Walkman first came out.  As a matter of fact, I owned a later model of the Walkman and used it literally all the time.  What's clear to me (again) is that our tendency for self-imposed isolation is not a new phenomenon.  It was there before social media, the smart phone, and the Internet.  And to be honest, we've been talking about these issues since the time of the ancient Greeks (see my recent post, "Today's Phaedrus moment").  I even bet that the earliest humans were once sitting in a cave, lamenting a younger generation of cavemen and cavewomen who were spending too much time alone drawing pictures on the cave walls.

Technological advances often bring welcome changes to society.  However, as with just about everything else, there can be drawbacks to technological change too.  I don't pretend to have all the answers here, but I do think that we need a more balanced discussions about the pro's and con's of technology, particularly social media, the smart phone, and the Internet.