[tacostakohashi]

> The idea of a Walkman is to isolate you from the rest of the environment

I guess my vague memories are that wasn't really how they were used in practice. The primary use case was things like during jogging / exercise, long bus/car/plane trips, that kind of thing.

Batteries were expensive, didn't last that long, and they the amount of music you could store or carry around on tapes was limited, so people weren't using them 24/7 like they do with phones these days.

If anything, they were a catalyst for social interaction as people would share mix tapes, listen to music together either with one earphone each or a headphone splitter, compare notes on the latest and greatest models, etc.