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

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

From Saturday Morning with Jack Tame by Newstalk ZB

May 2, 2026 · 10 min

About this episode

Dougal Sutherland discusses new research indicating a decline in the number of words people speak 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…

People in this episode

Host: Jack Tame

Guest: Dougal Sutherland

Topics covered

  • language decline
  • psychology research
  • social interaction
  • technology impact
  • communication

Keywords

  • spoken words
  • communication decline
  • social media
  • texting
  • psychology

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Newstalk ZB

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