As I was strolling through campus today, I turned on my music and all of the sudden; the music began blasting into my ear. Immediately, I ripped them out of my ear and began to wonder if loud headphones may be bad for our hearing and even cause hearing loss.
All of us use headphones and I do not think that we all understand the direct consequences that they may have on our hearing. The World Health Organization (WHO) analyzed a study and found that people aged 12-35 experience levels of sound that are unsafe for our ears. 50% of these people are exposed to unsafe levels and 40% of people are exposed to damaging levels. A decibel (dB) is a unit to measure sound. While humans can hear 20dB, the average talking is done at 40dB to 60dB. Headphones maximum volume is 105dB, which is similar to a rock concert at 11dB on average.
Even though we should all be concerned over this issue, there are some people that should be more worried. These people include musicians, people that attend concerts frequently and all people that work in a loud environment every single day. An osteopathic pediatrician from Vallejo, California, James E. Foy DO when asked how to reduce the chance of hearing loss says, “First and foremost, follow the 60/60 rule in regards to percentage of maximum volume and duration of time”.
All of this evidence pointing towards a correlation between headphone use and hearing loss, there are many things that need to be studied more within this topic. Does it matter what type of headphone is used (in-ear or over-ear)? Are some brands safer than others? A study needs to be done where; different headphones are tested so we can see the immediate impacts. It will be very hard to see the long-term effects at this time because a study of that magnitude will take years to complete and we do not have that much time. It should begin for future generations, but for us, it is too late. We must start to protect our ears today.
There is one way that almost every PSU student can relate to this topic of hearing loss: football games. This website provides a chart exhibiting how long it is safe to be exposed to certain decibel levels. Back in 2007, Penn State wrote this article about measuring the decibel levels in Beaver Stadium during a football game. The article states, “the loudest level we recorded was a peak sound pressure level (SPL) of 122 decibels (dB)… the loudest SPL we recorded averaged over a second or more was about 110 dB”. Exposure to 110 decibels is only safe for humans for fewer than two minutes, so you might want to consider bringing some ear plugs to the next home game.
I agree with that. I think headphone indeed does damage on our ears. It is said that one in six adults has enough hearing loss to cause problems in social situations. Headphones can be a danger to our hearing, especially if you listen to music with them too loudly for too long. But earbuds bring with them a new aspect of hearing loss because they don’t work to cancel out outside noise . And because they fit inside your ear, they are blasting that loud music directly into your ear canal. More and more people are listening to loud music for hours. And hearing loss occurs when the hair cells inside our ears are destroyed. The damage is done when we listen to loud music for hours.
This is definitely something that should be studied further. Hearing loss is now very common in Americans. Statistics show that in 5 Americans ages 12 and older have some sort of hearing loss that affects their interpersonal communications. This could be very well due to these earphones, but also how loud one plays their music could have an affect on this issue. I, myself am guilty of blasting my music as loud as it can be since i personally love the sounds of the bass and other instruments in the background of songs I’m fond of. Maybe this is what many Americans are doing as well which could intrinsically be linked to the volume and not particularly the headphones. So then hearing loss could be part of a private choice to increase the volume of audio.
This is a great topic. I always use a earphone and headphone, but I will control the volume to protect my ears. But after many ears, I still find out that I need to raise the volume to listen to music clearly. I think this is a sign that my ear already got some damage and I need to take more care of it. I also found some sources about how earphone can damage our hearing WebMD
This article is extremely interesting! I actually have found myself wondering the same thing and whether or not headphones can cause damage to our hearing especially because I feel like personally I have lost some hearing. I think it’s important to note out confounding variables however such as the volume and the person in general. It takes more volume for some to hear while it takes less for others. Could this be another effect? Very well written nice job!