Americans spoke 28 percent fewer words out loud between 2005 and 2019. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Arizona tracked the decline using audio recordings from over 2,000 people across 22 studies. The baseline: 16,632 spoken words per day in 2005.
The culprits are identifiable. App-based ordering, the shift from calls to texts, and the migration of daily life onto screens all correlate directly with the drop. The researchers did not speculate. They counted. And the data ends before the pandemic, which means the current number is almost certainly lower.
What makes the full study worth reading is the methodology: real ambient audio from real people, not self-reported surveys. The gap between what people think they say and what they actually say is the story inside the story. Find it at the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
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