Hearing Loss Is A Major Problem You Can Avoid — Here’s How

Hearing loss is practically an epidemic among young people in middle- and high-income countries — and it’s getting worse, not better. The World Health Organization said in February that 1.1 billion people ages 12-35 listen to personal audio devices at “unsafe volumes,” risking permanent hearing loss. Worse, people who experience hearing loss don’t always get the help they need fast enough, and they may not recognize that their behavior is risky to begin with.

The proliferation of smartphones, which provide easy access to music-listening apps and often come packaged with earbuds, coincides with higher hearing-loss statistics. There’s basically no question that the two are related.

“Everyone’s got something in their ears these days. That constant exposure is definitely causing an increase in hearing loss statistics,” Dr. Diane Catalano, a senior audiology clinician at Duke University Medical Center, told The Huffington Post.

Anna Gilmore Hall, executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America, concurred, adding that people are experiencing “severe hearing loss much earlier.”

Here are a few simple things you can do to protect yourself from permanent, noise-induced hearing loss:

Get Headphones That Fit

A whopping 86 percent of U.S. consumers age 18-29 own smartphones, according to a recent Pew survey. That’s a lot of phones. The problem is, the headphones that come with these devices aren’t designed to fit perfectly into your ears, which means they let in a lot of ambient noise. People tend to crank up the volume on their devices to make up for this, Catalano said.

It’s imperative that your headphones fit correctly, so you should test out a few different kinds before buying.

Earbuds should fit snuggly in your ears and isolate sound. The good ones come with a few different tip sizes, which let you pick which size best fills your ear. There’s no such thing as “one size fits all.” You can also get a custom pair made that molds perfectly to your ears, but be very careful about not pushing them in too far.

As for over-ear headphones: They should cover your ears completely and block out ambient noise.

Give Your Ears A Rest

The World Health Organization recommends that young people limit themselves to one hour of listening per day on devices like smartphones.

“You shouldn’t have exposure to 80 decibels for longer than 60 minutes,” Hall told HuffPost. “Give yourself a rest. Let your ears recover a little bit.”

For reference, 80 decibels is equivalent to the sounds of city traffic or a garbage disposal. After several hours, this decibel level can be damaging to your ears. Consider that next time you’re pumping music through your headphones.