#like yes that's part of it but also headphones have been inaccessible and expensive since i was in high school

[myhyperfixationisiforgot]

I've seen a couple of posts lamenting people who watch tiktoks or videos or whatnot out loud so I'll go ahead and say my piece: People don't wear headphones anymore because headphones are miserable now.

My first smartphone came with headphones. When I managed to break those, I could buy a replacement pair for a few bucks pretty much anywhere. Those headphones didn't need to be charged, they could be crammed into pretty much any pocket without a case.

Airpods are $100. Samsung's headphones are anywhere from $100-$170. I haven't seen corded headphones in years now. The pair I used to use (that still function six years after I bought them) literally can't work anymore, because my current phone doesn't even have a headphone jack. Even my cheap, shitty over-ear headphones cost $30, nearly twice as much as the last pair of corded headphones I bought in 2019.

My headphones only have about eight hours of battery. They take a different charging cord than my phone. They're big enough that I can't fit them in anything smaller than my backpack, and they're awkward to mess around with. The blue-tooth often doesn't work, especially if I switch between my computer and my phone. If I have trouble with the connection or the settings it's already pretty hit-or-miss if I can fix it. Folks like my mom or my nieces, who don't really do tech? Not a chance.

Anyways. People watch stuff without their headphones now because at some point in the last few years, headphones became a luxury product. They stopped being intuitive. People don't want to go through the trouble of buying expensive headphones that are super easy to lose and won't work without constant upkeep to listen to a fucking tiktok, you know?