Ema Suriano

I noticed it one morning while getting ready for work. As I stepped into the shower, I felt a sudden jolt of discomfort. Something was missing. I quickly hopped out, dripping water across the bathroom floor, to grab my phone and start a playlist. Only then, with music filling the room, could I continue my shower in peace.

That’s when it hit me: I can’t handle silence anymore.

What’s Actually Happening?

This condition is sometimes referred to as “silence aversion” or “background noise dependency” in psychological literature. While not officially classified as a disorder, it represents a growing behavioral pattern observed in our hyper-connected society. Essentially, it manifests as a persistent discomfort with silence and a compulsive need to fill quiet moments with auditory stimulation.

In my case, it started innocently. A podcast during my commute. Music while working. A YouTube video playing in the background while cooking. Gradually, these habits consolidated until virtually every waking moment required some form of audio input.

I found a very nice reading from the Nielsen Norman Group: Filling the Silence with Digital Noise, where they touched specifically this issue. Another very nice and kind of related is this one: The Vortex: Why Users Feel Trapped in Their Devices, this one is more related to the issue of phone addiction rather than disconfort of silence.

The Brain Science Behind It

Think of your brain like a muscle that adapts to whatever you do regularly. When you constantly feed it background noise, it starts to expect that stimulation all the time. After months or years of this habit, silence starts to feel weird or uncomfortable – like something’s missing.

It’s similar to how your phone might feel like a phantom weight in your pocket even when it’s not there. Your brain has been “trained” to expect certain inputs.

The science suggests this works a bit like other habits. The noise triggers little rewards in your brain’s dopamine system – the same system involved in other pleasurable activities. Over time, you need that audio hit to feel normal, and without it, you feel restless or uneasy.

Beyond Personal Weakness

For a long time, I dismissed this as a simple bad habit or personal quirk. But after speaking with friends and reading online discussions, I realized this pattern affects many people across different demographics.

I made a list of possible reason why I end up hitting the play button in different situaitons:

Avoidance mechanism, aka PROCRASTINATION: For me, silence often created space for intrusive thoughts about work deadlines, relationship issues, or existential concerns. Background noise effectively drowns out these uncomfortable thoughts.
Digital normalization: Our culture increasingly normalizes constant consumption of media. Streaming services, smartphones, and wireless earbuds have made it technologically possible to never experience silence.
Fear of boredom: I’ve noticed that I associate silence with boredom, creating an almost reflexive reach for my phone the moment things get quiet.
Societal pace: The modern emphasis on productivity and optimization makes silence feel wasteful. If I’m showering, why not also learn something from a podcast?

My “headphones” situations

Once I started paying attention, I identified several situations where my dependency was particularly strong:

Showering (as mentioned)
Walking the dog
Eating alone (this is one is specially tough …)
Driving anywhere, even for five minutes
Working on simple tasks
Working out at the gym
At the shupermarket

These moments represent the times when I’m most likely to instinctively reach for audio content rather than sitting with my thoughts or experiencing the ambient sounds around me.

My Remediation Journey

I’m not claiming to have solved this problem completely. It’s definelity a work in progress, and to be completely fair I don’t think it can be considered as done.

Although the fact that I got aware of this issue, researched a bit about it and sat down wrote, allowed me to experiment with a couple “solutions” or approaches that I think can potentially help:

Sound stepping-down: Instead of going straight to silence, I’ve been gradually reducing the complexity of what I listen to. I started by switching from podcasts with constant talking to instrumental music, then moved to simple ambient sounds, then to white noise, and finally I began tolerating brief periods of complete silence. This gradual transition has made the process much less jarring than trying to go cold turkey.
Silent task mastery: I decided to choose just one daily activity to practice doing in silence - making my morning coffee. I committed to experiencing the entire ritual without background noise, focusing on the sounds of the beans grinding, water boiling, and liquid pouring. Only after I felt comfortable with this did I add another silent activity (brushing my teeth), then another. Building this tolerance one specific task at a time has been surprisingly effective.
Reduce amount of consumption: I realized that part of my problem was this constant sense of obligation - feeling like I needed to keep up with every new podcast episode or YouTube video in my subscriptions. This created a perpetual “backlog” that fueled my need for constant audio. I’ve been deliberately pruning my subscription lists and accepting that I don’t need to consume everything. This has reduced the background craving that was driving me to fill every moment with sound.
More sports, less distractions: This year I started swimming frequently, and something that was really challenging at first was the idea of jumping in the water and being alone with my thoughts for an hour, not hearing anything except the water. Just swimming. Lately, I can confirm it’s maybe one of the best aspects of the sport. It’s such a technical and mechanical activity that it puts me in this flow state that fills my brain with great ideas. I’ve found that physical activities that naturally preclude audio distractions have become valuable training grounds for comfortable silence.

Mindful Content Consumption

I still believe platforms like YouTube and podcast networks offer valuable educational content. The goal isn’t to eliminate these resources but to engage with them more intentionally. Here’s my current approach:

I maintain a curated list of educational channels and podcasts that align with my learning goals rather than consuming whatever the algorithm suggests.
I set specific time blocks for content consumption rather than having it as constant background.
I’m experimenting with content-free zones in my home, particularly the bedroom and bathroom area.

One of my favorite extensions of my browser and that I have installed literaly everywhere is called Unhook.

A browser extension to remove YouTube distractions, including the recommended sidebar, shorts, endscreen video suggestions, user comments, homepage related videos feed, trending tab, turn off autoplay or annotations, and more.

Without I would totally falled into the Vortex problem of consumption, because the YouTube algorithm is extremely evil and have a list of really dark pattern for the user …

The Ongoing Process

This whole journey has been pretty eye-opening for me. Who knew that something as basic as being okay with silence would become such a challenge? Some days I’m better at it than others. I still catch myself automatically reaching for my phone when there’s a quiet moment.

But I’ve been noticing some cool changes. That step-down approach really helped—going from podcasts to just music, then to simpler sounds. Now I actually look forward to making my morning mate (🧉) in silence.

I’ve also gotten better at letting go of that weird obligation to consume everything. Like, do I really need to listen to every single podcast episode that drops? Probably not! That FOMO was driving a lot of my constant audio habits.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, maybe try some of these approaches yourself. Not because there’s anything wrong with enjoying content (I still love my podcasts!), but because having both options (noise or silence) just makes life richer.

The Silent Struggle: My Journey with Background Noise Dependency