What does it mean that members of society have evolved to constantly need audible stimulation? I feel like there has to be some sort of mental effect from listening to music constantly.
I find that a background noise app really helps me stay calm/lowers stress and anxiety, and I get a huge productivity boost out of it. Something about being at peace hearing natural sounds really does feel like it's deeply engrained in me, and I assume other people also. I wonder: (1) if there's a difference between the effects people generally get from various noise types (lofi, natural sounds, white noise etc), (2) whether something relevant about the individual correlates with preference among these, and (3) what is universal among these that makes background noise so commonly helpful.
(I use Noice for free nature/background sounds, off f-droid. I highly recommend it)
I use this this kind of background music as a way to drown other noises, because it's easily canceled by the brain.
It's basically a nicer white noise, better than silence because it allows me to ignore much better the noises around.
So for the 'need' for audible stimulation, it's actually the opposite : you cancel as much as possible the stimulation by having a constant and easily filterable input that drowns the unexpected noises that could be stimulating/break your focus
Certainly, people can point out that constant audible stimulation dates back to at least the radio craze near the beginning of the 20th century. So that gives us a place to start researching comparisons on the effect on attention spans and other aspects of human cognition.
a) No additional stimulus
b) Silence is easy to break. Both at home and in the office. And sudden noise during this silence kills concentration for me for good.
And selecting music I actually want to listen to is counterproductive - as is scrolling through playlists and youtube channels finding the "right thing" to put on and forget about.
Why would there be?
Are you implying that listening to music has absolutely no effect on humans ?
To me it's like asking "is there an effect to seeing all the time?" or "is there an effect to listening to people speak Korean?" or "is there an effect to touching things?". Sure, there are second and third-order effects of using your senses - for example "looking" at an article will ideally cause you to learn something new - but our eyes and ears in particular evolved to be open practically all the time, and most music falls squarely within the non-injurious range of auditory stimuli.