I use my headphones at least once everyday, whether it’s listening to music, or watching Netflix on my laptop. My mom always used to tell me that I was going to ruin my hearing because of always listening to my music too loud with my headphones. The younger generations especially love to blast their music at the highest volume possible, even if they are wearing earbuds. Can this actually ruin our hearing?
According to the American Osteopathic Association, “Today, 1 in 5 teens has some form of hearing loss – a rate about 30% higher than it was in the 1980s and 1990s.” This is believed to be linked to an increase in headphone use. Also, the new technology that has come out, such as iPhones, allows for music to be played at a louder level than before. So teenagers especially find themselves at risk for hearing loss, because they are enabled to turn the music up loudly on their individual devices.
Also, the duration at which one listens to audio through their headphones can effect their hearing in different ways. About 60% volume level for 60 minutes a day is healthy, anything more than that can become dangerous. According to WebMD, listening to music continuously with headphones can actually damage hair cells in the inner ear. This effects hearing as well. With easy access to hours of music streaming on kids cell phones today, this could be a huge problem.
Despite the possible risk of hearing loss, these younger generations refuse to stop listening to music and audio through headphones. With popular new apps for cell phones like vine, snapchat, youtube, and other social media sites it becomes easier to keep using earbuds on a daily basis. The younger generation is surrounded and very much involved in their cell phones and the apps and music they contain, which all boosts headphone use in some way.
Overall, hearing loss can gradually occur if one listens to music or audio too loudly, for too long. From here on out, it is safe to say that I should turn down the volume a little bit, while also not listening as long. It might be hard to accept change, but these tiny adjustments might just save my hearing.
As I sit here on my laptop, my headphones are in and I am listening to music. To me one of the best parts of wearing earbuds to me is how I can tune out the outside world and focus on on the task at hand, depending on what I am listening to. I completely understand how loud music can damage hearing through earbuds, especially since it is being directly played into the ear itself. More recently I have also noticed how some phones will stop the volume at a certain point and display a warning if something is plugged into the aux jack. I would be interested to know if this level of volume was actually the 60% you had mentioned in the article. I think as an individual it can’t hurt to turn it down and listen to less, whether it causes hearing loss or not.
I’ve known for some time that loud music through headphones can damage your hearing, but I after reading this it made me wonder if certain types of headphones are better for your hearing than others. So I looked into it and found out from the website below that over the ear headphones (like Beats by Dre) may prevent damage more than ear buds.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2014/02/are-headphones-and-earbuds-bad-for-your-hearing/index.htm