Watch Out — Your Earbuds could Hurt You!
It’s a Monday morning, and you’re going to work.
The Monday Blues are catching up with you, so you slip on your earphones for your Lo-fi Chill Beats Study Mix™. It isn’t punky enough, so you switch to rock and turn up the volume, hoping to drown out your worries.
Little do you know, your ears are blasting like this:
Source image: https://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/popcorn-theater-ban
Or this:
Source image: http://earthsky.org/space/supernova-mystery-felt-kepler-solves
What’s happening to your ears?
When listening to sounds, they pass from your eardrums to your middle ear to the cochlea in your inner ear. When this sound reaches the Organ of Corti in your cochlea, the inner hair cells lining it will vibrate, which translates the sound into an electrical signal sent to your brain.
When you listen to loud music on your earphones, it’s like having a party going on in your ears.
https://tenor.com/search/cover-my-ears-gifs
This causes the inner hair cells in your cochlea to be damaged.
Over time, you will lose your sensitivity to hear certain frequencies of sound, depending on which frequency bands these hair cells are responsible for.
How loud is too loud?
Under normal circumstances…
Once the volume exceeds 80 decibels, the risk of losing your hearing increases exponentially with every 5 decibel increase in loudness. Here’s how you subconsciously let it happen:
Imagine that you’re listening to music when your friend calls. You can’t hear what she’s saying, so you turn up the volume. After the two of you are done talking, you hang up, and the music resumes, blasting into your ear.
Your ears explode. You yank off your earbuds, and can immediately feel the consequences. Already, sounds in your surrounding environment are dampened, and a ringing sensation echoes in your ear.
As the decibels plummet, your hearing will revert to normal in a matter of hours. However, if you expose yourself to more than 80 decibels of sound for over 8 hours each day, you run the real risk of losing your hearing very soon.
How old are your ears?
Human ears are only able to pick up sounds ranging from 20Hz to 20000Hz. This range shortens when our ears naturally degenerate as we age. Are your ears as youthful as you think they are? Try this test out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNjPmhbPc9I
How can you protect your ears?
Unfortunately, degeneration of hearing is irreversible, because once the cells in your ears are damaged, they can’t grow back.
1) Use fitting earbuds or headphones
Choose fitting earbuds or headphones that can block out sounds from the environment. This prevents you from subconsciously turning up the volume to drown out background chatter.
2) Don’t use earbuds in loud environments.
Better still, avoid using your earbuds to listen to music in loud environments. Since our natural instincts is to turn up the volume to drown out surrounding noises, it’s better not to listen to music at all.
3) Turn your volume down
Try not to turn the volume up more than ⅔ of the maximum volume. This is to ensure that you’re listening below 80 decibels of sound, which sounds like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4rnbIaeBAc
4) Give your ears a rest. Follow the 60–10 rule.
After 60 minutes of listening to music, take off those earbuds and give your ears a break of at least 10 minutes.
5) Check your hearing
Finally, have regular checks (once every 5 years) to ensure that your ears are healthy. If you suspect at any point in time that you may have hearing difficulties, go see a doctor right away!
Don’t be ear-responsible — with proper care, your ears will be healthier and you will be happier.
Yo! I’m Miao. Can’t believe you scrolled all the way down here… bet you could’ve done a Math question with that time 😎 How about this — want to do Math together? I’m right here!
