Hearing Loss Increases in U.S among Teens

According to the latest studies related to hearing loss in the United States, an important number of teens have begun losing their hearing capacities and this is by no means something to let it just go and do nothing about.

Reasons are various, but they are mainly surrounding on the loud music that these teenagers are listening to their headphones, from their digital musical players, mobile phones, etc. this will not only trigger bigger problems as the person will get older and he may even come to that situation when he no longer distinguishes any hearing, but as well affect his school work.

By this study results, Dr. Gary Curhan of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston intends to encourage people to be careful and parents to interdict their children listen too often to such gadgets. They took in their research children aged between 12 and 19 years old. They compared the hearing loss from the children living between 1988 and 1994 and the hearing loss from the children living between 2005 –2006. Apart from being a bigger percentage, the increasing level was as well faster.

How this disability does characterize itself? Well, a child that suffers from it cannot distinguish water running or his mother when she whispers “good night”. They cannot actually hear at 16 to 24 decibels.

If we let it and make a comparison to the nationwide, there are around 6.5 million teens that have at least a slight hearing loss. Those that have a slight hearing loss will find it easier to hear vowels than consonants. They will be able to speak right but they may not speak fully intelligible.

The reason for all this is listening very loud to the music. The solution is not forbidding teens to listen o MP3 players, but this means that children should be provided with a proper ducati9nnintousing them.

This is not something new that we deal with, as each generation had its own music and teenagers were those that promulgated it, as in 1960s existed the bulky headphone, or the Sony Walkmans of the 1980s. Anyhow, the problem with teenagers nowadays is that they listen twice as much music as they use to before.  This is as well an effect of the thing that the older technologies had a smaller battery capacity and limited music storage.

Apple has made the iPhone to be able to be set up and blocked by parents, so that children will not be able to listen harder at it. This is done with a code and then they will be able to stay relaxed while their children are out or at school.

With those that did not succeed in doing this, they have problems with their children that they have to deal with, if not they can get worse.

According to a study performed by Fligor, more than a half of the 200 New York students that he performed this study on, listened to music at 85 decibels or higher. This sound is as loud as a vacuum cleaner or a hair dryer. If you get used in hearing so loud, you may not perceive anyone around you that talk at a normal level and that listen at normal sounds levels.