This post was written by Rachel Doherty for tweens2teen.com and has been republished her with permission.
Hearing loss is an increasing issue for tweens and teens due to the accessibility of sound through smart phones, tablets and computers; not to mention all the older forms of technology we had as kids.
We don’t have too many arguments in our house, but the yelling that we do have tends to be because someone has headphones on and others are trying to get their attention.
Do you have teenagers in your house listening to music for more than an hour a day?
Then this article will set you straight on what you can do to make sure their hearing lasts a lifetime.The World Health Organisation believes that around half of our tweens and teens are being exposed to unsafe level of sound from “personal audio devices”, including smart phones.
Loud music flattens the little hairs in our ears that help our brain process sounds. Given that teenagers tend to listen to a lot of music and video content on smart phones these days, as well as laptops and tablets, parents should be mindful of how those sounds are impacting on the hearing health of their kids.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest we look out for these signs of hearing loss:
- Distorted or muffled hearing
- Difficulty understanding what others are saying, either on the phone or face-to-face
- Pain or ringing in their ears after listening to loud sounds
- Difficulty picking out some sounds, like birds chirping, alarm clocks, watch alarms, phones and doorbells
I’m not sure about your experience of teenagers, but for me that last one seems to be part of everyday life with them. I’d call it selective hearing loss!
So if we can’t tell from their behaviour if they are damaging their hearing, I think it’s best to take a preventative approach anyway.
Looking after the hearing health of teens
The Palo Alto Medical Foundation suggests these four ideas to prevent hearing loss:
Stick to the 60/60 rule This rule is simple; 60 minutes of listening at 60 percent volume, max. Then they should do something else and give their ears a break.
Buy quality headphones Ear buds sit right inside the ear and closer to all the clever mechanisms that enable us to hear, if you can convince your teens and tweens to wear over-ear headphones, they’ll not only move the sound back a little further, but good quality headphones cut out background sounds that mean they don’t need to turn their music up as loud in the first place.
Hearing loss adds up, but is sneaky Our teenagers won’t see the damage they’re doing over time, but it’s important to know that they should limit sound levels to 85 decibels. You can download apps on smart phones to do this, with some even providing an option to manage sound within set decibel ranges.
Remind them to be safe when they are listening to music It might be legal to ride or run wearing headphones, but young people need to remember that they are relying on one less sense to help them know what is going on around them.
These are all sound advice, for a life of enjoying music; now we just need to get our teens and tweens to listen. What is your approach to your teenager’s hearing? Is it something you’ve thought about? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
