Teen’s Ipods and Hearing Loss
I know my daughter’s ipod is too loud when I can hear her music in the car’s front seat while she’s sitting in the back. “Turn it down,” I yell and signal, pointing to my ear.
However, new research (from the University of Colorado and Boston Children’s Hospital and reported by Time Magazine) shows that most teens actually turn up the sound when pressured to turn it down by friends or family. Sound familiar?
The difference between teens today and teens of days gone by is that the sound is directly pumped into their ears via those tiny earbuds, and most teens are not aware of how loud their music actually is. In addition, the battery life of an ipod far exceeds that of a walkman, so teens are listening for longer. Cory Portnuff, the audiologist who led this study explains that the effects of loud music are not only determined by volume, but also by listening time. A teen could listen to music at 70% volume for over four hours per day without a great amount of hearing loss risk. At softer levels, your teenager could listen for even longer without any harm to the inner ear. However, just five minutes of music at full volume per day can cause permanent damage. “It’s a matter of how high you listen and for how long,” Portnuff says.
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Read the original post here.
