Behavior: Suffering From Sensory Overload?

Different people have different levels of sensitivity. Sensitivity can be to light, sound, emotions and sensation. That’s why it makes sense that silence “sounds” different to different people. Some people can sleep through a blaring alarm clock wake up while others are immediately jarred into wakefulness by someone walking around in another part of the house.

Some of this sensitivity is what people are born with. Other sensitivity is what people are acclimated to. Someone who grows up in a loud, fighting family is used to dinner time with lots of arguing and emotional outbursts. This is normal to them. Other people are used to quiet dinners without much conversation and certainly no arguing. When put in different environments after several years or decades of being used to one or the other of these situations, the person used to quiet dinners will feel aurally assaulted by the noisy dinner, while the person used to noisy dinners will feel like something’s wrong at a quiet dinner.

There is definitely a trend away from silence with current generations of children being raised now. That trend starts with television as a babysitter — and lots of it, and continues on with personal audio and video machines that they can use to constantly listen to things other than what is normally around them.

Cell phones are so prevalent now that most school age children either own one or have access on a regular basis to one. This means children are calling and listening more, programming ring tones and downloading music to their phones, and allowing quiet to be around them less.

Noise can become an addictive substance just like food can. The people who eat because they are bored, rather than hungry, are just as likely to listen to something because it is quiet rather than because they need information or contact.

This new noise generation runs the risk of being assaulted, voluntarily and in a second-hand manner, by noise to the extent that they no longer recognize or appreciate the benefits of quiet.