Common Causes of Hearing Loss – And How to Avoid Them
More and more people are starting to switch to headphones to enjoy music. Whether it’s drowning out the subway commute to the office with a favorite rock band blasting in one’s ears or the chance to survive epic traffic in the airport because a favorite hip-hop album is blaring on an iPod, bringing music to different environments is becoming a huge part of everyday life. And because of this, people are tending to deal with some hearing-related trouble that comes with listening to music blasted into one’s ears every day.
The main offender in the world of hearing loss and headphones isn’t actually volume, but the style of headphones being used. For people who are dealing with a lot of time spent listening to music through headphones, earbuds can mean serious damage for one’s hearing, but without any type of warning. Unlike other headphones, that actually provide some sort of muffling of outside noises and do not fit directly into one’s ears, earbuds don’t muffle anything. This means that users tend to rely on pumping the volume up to drown out the noise of a crowded subway car or bustling and noisy airplane, and that is when the trouble begins.
A major aspect of hearing loss is the fact that repeated exposure to noises that are bad or damaging to the ear doesn’t need to happen over the course of numerous years. If someone is using a portable music player to blast songs every single day to and from work, there is enough happening that can cause the sort of trouble that leads to early-onset hearing loss. And while people used to see this kind of rapid disintegration of abilities if someone was working in construction or handling sound at loud rock shows, it’s not the kind of thing that traditionally happened with casual listeners enjoying sounds on their portable music players.
The reason that it is now is a combination of factors that go beyond the simple make and model of earbud headphones. They are a huge part of it not just because of the limitations of noise muffling abilities while requiring users to blast the volume level, but also because of the fact that they come standard with so many devices. This means that people are accustomed to enjoying music through earbuds rather than purchasing other pairs of headphones, so that the damage begins earlier and happens for longer. The other factor involving portable music players is simply the amount of time that people spend listening to music at loud volumes, and volumes designed to block out the noises of the city.
The fact is that it’s not beneficial for anyone’s hearing to try to drown out the bustle of a morning commute. With noise-canceling headphones, there is less of a need to crank the volume up, but chances are, there is still going to be some white noise happening. And instead of trying to eviscerate it, those who spend time listening to music on headphones should consider the settings they choose to enjoy music. After all, there’s no reason to not simply deal with the sights and sounds of a commute, and to save the music for later or somewhere else. This way, everything from the battery life of your iPod to the capabilities of your ears benefits.