Dougal Sutherland: New research finds people are speaking fewer words each year

Are we losing our words? 

Some new psychology research suggests that we are gradually speaking fewer words each year. Psychologists looked at data from over 2000 people between 2005-2019 that sampled sounds and speech from people’s everyday lives.  

Researchers found that, over time, people are talking less and less.   

By 2019 on average, people spoke about 12,800 words per day – this was down from an estimated 16,000 words per day in 2007.  

On average this is a drop of about 300 words per year. 

Between 2005 and 2019, this represents a 28% drop in daily spoken words  

At first glance, losing 300 words a day doesn’t sound like much. But across years and decades, it reflects many conversations that simply aren’t happening anymore.   

Why this happening?  

The timing overlaps with the rise of texting, social media, emails, etc – we can’t establish a direct cause but looking at younger and older participants:  

• People under 25 lost about 450 words per year   
• People over 25 lost about 310 words per year   
• Younger people lost around 44% more words per year than older adults 

This suggests technology may play some role, but it does not explain everything. The decline affected everyone, pointing to broader social changes such as:   

• Fewer casual public interactions   
• Different work patterns   
• Less shared physical space   
• More solitary or screen‑based time   

Why does this matter?   

Spoken conversation is not just information exchange. It plays a key role in things like social connection and wellbeing. Speaking less means connecting less, which may link to the wider issues of loneliness, social isolation, etc. 

The good news: 300 words a day is not hard to regain.   

Practical Implication:   

Small conversations matter more than we think. An extra 300 words could be:   

• A short hallway chat   
• A few minutes checking in with a colleague   
• Asking a neighbour how they’re going   
• A longer, more thoughtful answer to “How was your day?”   

These everyday moments add up.   

If loneliness and disconnection are growing problems, the solution may start with something surprisingly modest: speak a little more—on purpose. One extra conversation a day could help slow the slide into silence, for individuals and for society as a whole. 

LISTEN ABOVE  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks, that'd be are.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
We losing our words? There's some amazing new psychology research
that suggests that people are gradually speaking fewer and fewer
words every year. Clinical psychologists Doogle Sutherland from Umbrella Well
Being is here with the details. This morning, Kilder Doogle.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Cure Jack, and I feel like you might be the
exception to this finding. Oh no, fact, no, no, no, no, Well,
you know you were. You were talking a couple of
weeks back around, you know, learning Spanish and et cetera,
et cetera. So I wonder if you perhaps are speaking
more than you might have done a couple of years ago.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Maybe when I can remember the Spanish. But I'm concerned
that it's a one in one out rule in my bay.
If I learn a word in Spanish, then you know,
ten minutes later, I'll be looking for a word in
English and I'll just be grasping at thin air.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
You know, well, well, and you know that the research
suggests that maybe we're losing as much as something like
three hundred words words a year, even.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
That really it's a word more or less a word
a day, it is.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, it is. They the figures that they're using. Twenty nineteen,
they found it on average, people spoke twelve eight hundred
words per day, but that was lower than to the
other the starting point in two thousand and seven when
people were speaking about sixteen thousand words a day. And
I think that it's the way they measured. I think

(01:45):
they essentially kind of just leave I'm simplifying it, but
they essentially just leave tap recorders around in your house
and listen to how much you talk, not really listening
to the content, just you know, listening to how much
the amount that you're doing. And they just found this
sort of slow drop off over the last sort of
ten fifteen years.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
So to be totally clear, we asked speaking fewer words
in total, as in the total number of words. But
to be clear, like one word can be repeated, right,
so and and that's three okay, sopos to saying our
vocabularies are shrinking.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yes, that's right. Yes, we're just saying less. So the
quantity that is not it's not not talking about the quality.
Perhaps you know, you could argue that maybe that that
we're being much more erudite and much much more concise
in our language. And that's a reasonable explanation. It's not
what the it's not what the researchers thought, but but

(02:44):
that that's certainly a possible hypothesis, is that we're actually
being we're being I'm not doing it now, am I?
We're being better, more concise with our words, the exact
opposite of what I just did.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Don't They like, I'm going down a bit of a
sign track here. But you know, the constructed languages, So
languages that have been deliberately constructed, Esperanto is the one
that kind of stands out. They are often designed for
utility and efficiency, to say, they have few words relatively speaking. Yeah, yeah,

(03:16):
And so in some ways you could say, well, if
you are at the stage where you can actually cognitively
inventor language and other people can pick that up, that's
so advanced in terms of intellect that maybe fewer words
in that instance could be a good thing. But actually
that's not really what their research suggests.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
No, that's not what they think. That it's we're gradually
just becoming less communicative over time. And they found it
an interesting age difference that people under the age of
twenty five lost about four hundred and fifty words a year,
whereas people over twenty five lost about three hundred words

(03:58):
a year on average. And the argument they're kind of
making is that it's not it's certainly not causal or anything.
But they're saying, hey, look, you know, younger people tend
to be on devices more and you know, on social media,
and so they're not perhaps more so than older people,
and therefore they're not talking as much that they don't
really know the cause, but that you know, they're just

(04:19):
sort of speculating as to possible reasons why this might be.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, I suppose that makes sense, and that if you
think the biggest drop off is with the young people.
And I think about my experience as a teenager. I
was a teenager just before, just before social media was invented,
and so when I wanted to talk to my mates
and gas Bag, we literally had the way we get
on the phone and talk kind of insufferably for a

(04:45):
couple of hours every year. Yeah, yeah, that's what I
used to do, all right, And of course I thought
it was terrible. But now you can peer that without Yeah, no,
that's right, I can remember today.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, Dad would get really annoyed and storming down the stairs. So,
who's on the phone? You've been on the phone for
a bloody hour or so. I was talking, just talking
to the whoever.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
My sister. Yeah, no, so we were very similar. We
had a couple of phones, but it was the same line.
And my sister and I used to have these terrible feuds,
and I in the heat of the argument. Sometimes this
does not reflect well upon me. When she was talking
to her mates, I just walk down and just unplug
the phone from the wall. Would really annoy her, you know, Yeah, anyway.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Did you wouldn't attempted to sort of lift up the
receiver silently and listen on the.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Other Well, I felt like I would try and do that,
and people would like, you could hear that, you could
just hear the little you know, and hang on a second. Yeah,
somebody on the other line, exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, that was before of course we got interrupted.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
By the y.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, okay, So I mean that makes sense. But I
suppose if it if that is suggesting that, despite the
name of social media, we are actually less socially connected,
it could be an indicator of a more serious problem, right, yeah, it.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Could be like, you know, we at various times people
talk about we don't we haven't talked about loneliness and
New Zealand lots, but in other countries it's got quite
a lot of press. In the UK they had for
a period of time. I don't know if they've still
got it. They had a Minister for loneliness, and so
there's there's quite a lot of concern around the world
about you know, us losing social connections, and you know,

(06:28):
they call it an epidemic of loneliness around the world,
and that you know, whilst we're more connected, we're actually
we're more isolated, weirdly than we ever have been. And
perhaps our less speak you know, speaking less to one
another is just one of the many things that might
contribute to that. We perhaps we're just losing those even

(06:49):
working from home, I guess, you know, I think it's
you know, there are some good advantages to working from home,
but when you're working from home, you don't you're not
having water cooler conversations with your colleagues at work. So
there's just a lot of small things that perhaps contribute
to us having you know, speaking have less to say,
or speaking lest I don't know, if we've got less
to say, yeah, perhaps we're saying it least.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
It's not even just the like with friends and colleagues.
And I think about the way in which, you know,
a lot of transactions are made these days, Like it
used to be that you would go to the bank
and talk to the teller and now you have the machine,
or now you have online banking. Used to be even
little things, right, So this morning I was running late

(07:32):
and I wanted to get a smoothie, okay, And so
my options were I could go to the cafe and
I could talk to the person and order a smoothie,
or for efficiency reasons, because I knew I was going
to be cycling there and getting there as soon as possible,
I could go to the online little app and order
it and it would be waiting for me there. And
so that's that's what I chose. But me but instead

(07:53):
of saying hi there, good morning, how are you you're good? Thanks? Yeah,
because he does so he is lovely outside. Yeah, cool cup,
he's get a smoothie, instead of doing that, I just
went in and said Jack, ye I have a good one, yep,
thanks yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Can you think if.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
That's multiplied three times or four times in a day.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, one hundred percent. And it's
sort of I find that sad. You know, there's as
a counter to your example, there's a great little butchery
around our place, Jip Street Butchery. I'll give them a
bit of a shout out that they are always there's
people in there and they're always chatting to you. They
know everybody by name who comes in, and you have
all these conversations about everything from you know, politics to

(08:35):
you know, the state of the beef industry, which is
highly relevant to them. But you know, there's lots of
chat and banter which and it just has that little,
nice little sense of I'm connected to a community people. Yeah,
you know, people know me and I have that convers
I think it's really nice and it's you know, I
think it's sad that we're well, we might be losing
that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
You wonder if those sorts of businesses are actually gonna
be valued more and more, you know, if there's going
to be a kind of if they're ultimately is going
to be a bit of a you know, a reaction
to yes, yeah, the reduce number of those social interactions
during a day, and people are actually more and more
going to value the good old fashioned getting to that person,

(09:13):
you know, as well, those human connections.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah. Look, one thing I've noticed is for younger people, though,
there tends to be a bit more sort of anxiety
about talking on the phone, on the phone, about talking
talking in persons as well.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Young people they don't they don't know what to do
for talking on the phone because they've never done it.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and and and and I
think that's sad as well. But but you know, I
think that and that's the lesson for us, I think
is that the more we can just have those small
interactions that the better off, you know, maybe the better
we'll just make them. It doesn't take an awful lot,
you know, it's just saying as as you pointed out,
you know, saying, stopping and talking to the person in

(09:53):
the shops. It's something quite nice actually, they say, how
you doings truthfully and correct and then you can have
actually have a conversation. I always come out feeling slightly
better about the world when I have those small conversation,
and I think it's a nice you know, it's a
really nice thing to do just to build community.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
I totally agree well see Google, Thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
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