My name is Art and I’m a worried father. The Associated Press is reporting on studies which indicate that iPods and other portable music players are often used in ways which damage hearing. I am particularly disturbed to learn that the ear bud headphones are significantly worse than other kinds of headphones. Naturally, my son loves his ear buds.
You can read the entire AP article at the Star-Tribune’s web site, ‘Ear bud’ headphones can cause hearing loss, experts warn
“We’re seeing the kind of hearing loss in younger people that’s typically found in aging adults,” said Dean Garstecki, an audiologist and professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
The big culprits aren’t the devices themselves, but the tiny “ear bud” style headphones that the music players use. “Unfortunately, the earbuds are even more likely to cause hearing loss than the muff-type earphones that were used on Walkman and portable CD players,” Garstecki said.
The article concludes with
Hearing advocates are pressing for people to turn down the volume. The rule of thumb suggested by researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital is to hold the volume of a music player no higher than 60 percent of the maximum, and use it for only about an hour a day….
“If music listeners are willing to turn the volume down further still and use different headphones, they can increase the amount of time that they can safely listen,” Garstecki said.
I don’t know the “answer” to this problem but certainly the first step is to talk to our children, while we can.
