I don’t recall exactly where I clipped this little tidbit, but I found it interesting to reflect on and wanted to pass it along here.
“People tend to talk more loudly into mobile phones than they do in person. There are several reasons for this. One reason is people subconsciously rely on hearing their own voice back to modulate their own speech volume. Mobile phones don’t send “backtalk” (a reduced volume “copy” of the person’s speech) back into the earphone. Land-based phones have done this for a long time (this is also the cause of the “echo” effect you can hear on many cordless phones). Another reason is the conversation in the phone may demand more mental processing power. This is because mobile phones sound different from normal speech due to audio data compression or analog background noise. Whatever the reason, the net effect is the person is less aware of the people around him/her.”
