asking for a friend: am i overusing my earbuds?
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playing loud music so close to your eardrums can cause permanent hearing loss if you’re not careful. getty
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dear asking for a friend,
i’m addicted to my earbuds. i can’t go a day without them. but i’m worried about my hearing. what can i do to prevent any damage and do wireless make a difference?
signed,
can’t give up my earbuds
dear can’t give up my earbuds,
yes, having a pair of tiny speakers right inside your ears makes music and audio sound so good! earbuds are convenient when you’re on the go, multi-tasking or just tuning out the world around you.
and wired earbuds are on trend, if you check out the celebrities and influencers noted on the fashionable instagram account wired it girls. they’re practical, too, because they don’t need to be charged, are less expensive and some audio lovers don’t like the feel of over-ear headphones.
but playing loud music so close to your eardrums can cause permanent hearing loss if you’re not careful.
our ears are made up of the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear, which all work together to process sounds. part of the inner ear, known as the cochlea, contains about 16,000 tiny hair cells that help to send sound messages to the brain, according to the u.s. centers for disease control and prevention (cdc). listening to loud noise for a long time is particularly harmful because it can overwork hair cells in the ear, which can kill them.
and here’s the kicker: up to 30 to 50 percent of hair cells can be damaged or destroyed before resulting changes in your hearing can even be measured by a hearing test. by the time you start to notice your hearing loss, many of those hair cells have been destroyed and can’t be repaired. over time, as more hair cells get damaged, your hearing will continue to get worse.
there are other complications as well – evidence published in hearing research has shown the link between hearing loss and diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and a 2020 lancet commission report associates hearing loss with dementia.
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statistics canada reports that 19 percent of adults — that’s 4.6 million people — have at least mild hearing loss. the world health organization (who) warns that 1.1 billion teenagers and young adults are at risk for long-term hearing loss as a result of noise exposure; an estimated 50 percent are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from personal audio devices.
dr. bill hodgetts, an audiologist in edmonton and professor in the department of communication sciences and disorders at the university of alberta, has looked at the effects of exposure to personal listening devices that have concerned the hearing community since the days of the sony walkman in the 1980s. he’s seen the uptick in earbud popularity.
“when the iphone and android devices came out, it just seemed like everyone’s got earbuds in their ears,” he says. “and so we did a few studies.”
one examined location factors that might influence volume, so participants listened to music in quiet, in the din of a cafeteria or with street traffic noise. they were asked to set the volume level to where it sounded best, and found that the context of where you’re listening does influence whether or not you use them at a safe level.
“imagine the individuals at a gym where there’s a lot of banging and music playing and a lot of people talking,” hodgetts says. “so you keep turning your phones up. but if you put them back on when you get home at that level, you blow your head off.”
with earbuds, there’s also the safety risk of disrupting your ability to locate where sounds are coming from, so you might not hear a car if you’re biking or running, for example.
what is considered a safe volume? hodgetts says there’s not a prescriptive number, but advises that you should be able to be listening comfortably while others can’t hear what you’re listening to.
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as with many other tech devices, less is considered more in terms of your health.
“if you’re listening to your ipod or your phone at 90 decibels, you’ll be only safely listening to that for maybe 15 to 30 minutes. and if you’re listening to it for hours, then you could be exceeding your maximum allowable daily noise dose,” he says. canada’s federal occupational health and safety regulations say noise exposure level should not exceed 87 decibels for eight hours in any 24-hour period. interesting, too, he says it takes about 15 or 16 hours for your ears to typically recover from a one-off noise overdose, but if you’re listening every day at extreme volume, then your ear never really recovers and damage becomes permanent over time.
“people don’t realize it’s happening unless it’s accompanied by some ringing in the ears and more hearing loss.”
wireless earbuds aren’t a better option because the speaker is still in the ear – it’s the output of the device that’s the culprit. and old-school headphones can also damage your hearing if you use them too long or play music too loudly.
hodgetts also says that noise-cancelling earbuds are a good choice because they help block the ambient sounds around you so you don’t need to crank the volume.
bottom line, though, is that hearing loss is an invisible problem that he and his colleagues are working to change.
“even if we notice ringing in our ears from a high exposure, the ringing usually subsides and leaves us with a false sense that nothing permanent happened,” he says, adding that noise exposure is cumulative in the same way that sun exposure is.
“the thinking around sunscreen has changed. and i think it’s comparable. we have to think about noise hygiene the way we think about skin hygiene – and it’s a conversation that parents and children should have together.”
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is there something about health that you (or a friend, wink, wink) have always wondered about but are too embarrassed to ask? send a note to info@healthing.ca. we promise your ‘friend’s’ secret — and identity — is safe with us!
karen hawthorne is a toronto-based writer.
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