I woke up hearing muffled noises a couple of days ago.
“This is it,” I thought. “This is the day that listening to my iPod too loud finally made me deaf.”
Although my hearing went back to normal hours later, that may not be the case for people younger than me.
Hearing loss increased from 14.9 percent in 1988 to 1994, to 19.5 percent in 2005 to 2006, according to a recent study by the American Medical Association. The 4.6 percent increase was concluded after sampling 12 to 19-year-olds.
Noise-induced hearing loss may be caused by listening to loud noises over a long period of time or being exposed to a one-time sound such as an explosion, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders’ website.
Many blame earphones for causing noise-induced hearing loss because of its “bud” design. Because the bud is inside the ear, sounds are more likely to damage hair cells, which are responsible for converting wavelengths into sound. Once they’ve been damaged, they don’t grow back.
But it is not the fault of earphones, the iPod that hosts the music or the companies that create such products.
It’s a personal problem.
It’s an issue about having self control and thinking about long-term consequences, which frankly, teens – and myself – don’t often do.
In fact, Apple has an iPod setting that locks volume levels in order to avoid surpassing a specific volume limit.
I understand wanting to clearly hear Daft Punk’s “Around the World” instead of a bus engine, but cranking up the volume to muffle background sounds is perhaps the main reason behind this issue.
I always thought hearing loss would be something fixable in the future and that I didn’t have to worry about volume control. But when one in five teens have some form of hearing loss in the U.S. today, it reminds me turn the volume wheel to the left.
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