How many people does the average person talk to during their lifetime? Peter Scrimshaw, Stony Stratford
Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.
Readers reply
The average hermit, or the average call centre worker? bricklayersoption
I don’t know? I’ll ask around … or is that going to mess up my figures? DewinDwl
Never having kept a daily count, I can say that as a retired senior well over 70, the number of people I now talk to daily has dropped to a not-worthy-of-boasting zero to three a day, unless you also count pets and house plants. Richard Orlando, Quebec
I would estimate that the average person talks to around 30,000 people in a lifetime. Royston Humphries
Somewhere between 8 billion and zero. leadballoon
I’m going to interpret this literally; as in speaking words face to face or on the phone. So I’m 65, almost, so a little over 23,000 days. When I tended bar, I could easily have spoken with more than 100 people in one day. It’s rare I interact with nobody at all in any given day … so I’m imagining over my lifetime, more than half a million or so. And counting! LizManus
If you’ve been a teacher – thousands before you even begin counting. Then there’s shop assistants, hairdressers, bank clerks, bus conductors (back in the day), and now call centre operatives and train managers and waitstaff and tour guides and doctors and nurses and dentists and plumbers and accountants and the guy on the corner who’s asking for the price of a cup of tea. At least a million? Judy Garton-Sprenger
The more important question is perhaps: how many people listened to you when you talked during your lifetime? Mike Muller, Johannesburg
It depends a lot on what you do for a living, where you live, how shy or extroverted you are, and more. I teach in higher education, so year on year I “talk to” quite big groups of new people. But really what does the answer matter? It’s the depth, quality and attention to the minds and experiences of people when I talk with them, and they with me, that counts. But anyway, all in all my guess would be about 40,000. Andrew Cooper
Whatever the number, it’s too many. GodlessHeathens
It’s not quantity, but quality that counts. That’s why I talk to myself. jimlewis1
I haven’t the foggiest but I do hope whatever it is it’s an odd number, I hate even numbers. Bastards. itsonly4degrees
Does it still count if the other person isn’t listening or is ignoring Mr/Mrs/etc Average? Pubtalk
IMHO I’ve talked to far too many people. The_Seer
Very few, most people talk at others or are waiting to talk at others. spankypersiflage
I didn’t speak to anyone yesterday. My wife went away with friends for the weekend, bliss for me having all day to read the newspapers uninterrupted by her incessant meaningless chatter. ImmigrantSong
Nobody here seems to have any idea what the average is, so I think we need a national exercise where we all count the number of times we speak to somebody else every day for a year and then the government works out the average. I’ll suggest it to Liz Truss and she can get busy on it, perhaps it will take her mind off the other stuff that seems to be troubling her. MrEVoice
It’s probably equal to 10 times the number of people that were actually listening when the average person was talking. On average, that is. OldSkeptic
It varies. As a full time university lecturer I could well have spoken to about 100 individuals a day. On quiet days working from home: my cat and a librarian. SvetlanaKhorkina
If I post a response to this question does that count as me talking to everyone who reads it? Face to face conversation is one thing but electronic media and telecoms means that we “talk” to each other in multiple formats. FirebirdV
If you define talking as having meaningful, honest, communication, about two or three, if you’re lucky. Give it a broader definition, such as any verbal interaction, and the answer is too many. CFranklin
