As a joyless, intolerant shrew, my kneejerk answer is a predictable “if only”. Writing this on a train full of cheerful holidaymakers is not helping. But perhaps I’m wrong. Increasingly, I find myself confronted with evidence that people are taking “say less” rather too literally.

According to a recent article in The Guardian, a study found that people are speaking less than they used to. Between 2005 and 2019, the average number of words spoken each day fell by around 338 words every year. Researchers analysed recordings from 2,197 people aged between 10 and 94, collected randomly as they went about their daily lives. Among people under 25, the decline was even steeper, at around 451 fewer words a year.

Even I can admit that sounds worrying.

Spending time talking to other people is good for our brains, health and mood. Social connection matters so much that the US Surgeon General warned in 2023 that a lack of it can increase the risk of premature death by an amount comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

And yet silence has somehow become the latest self-improvement goal. We have “silent walking”, noise-cancelling headphones and, apparently, “hushpitality”. Hilton’s latest trend report describes a growing appetite for quieter travel, driven partly by digital and AI-powered services such as virtual check-ins, text-based communication and bots. It even found that 57% of surveyed US travellers would be interested in a silent or quiet retreat.

We seem increasingly convinced that what we need is less noise. But perhaps what we actually need is more conversation.

It is another example of how confusing modern advice about living well has become. One week lettuce is potentially deadly, the next New Scientist tells us lightbulbs are “wrecking your metabolism”. Soon enough, I expect darkmaxxing influencers to be recommending cave living.

So should we be wearing our headphones more or less? Is silence something to gorge on, or something best enjoyed in moderation?

Perhaps we need a version of Michael Pollan’s wonderfully simple rule for eating, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”, but for conversation.

“Speak words, mostly in person, not too loudly, and never on speakerphone.”

I’m open to other suggestions. Preferably quietly voiced.