Parents have always complained about kids playing their music too loudly. It’s almost like a rite of passage. But these days, there is real concern regarding hearing loss in young people. If you’ve ever put on your TV headphones – not because you want to watch TV, but because you don’t want to listen to their music, you know what we’re talking about!
I’m sure there are plenty of parents and grandparents out there who really wish the blame could be placed on the type of music kids are listening to today, but that’s not the problem. It’s the way kids are listening to music that is raising red flags.
Will today’s teens need TV hearing aids tomorrow?
Anyone who has purchased headphones to hear the TV better can probably testify that they can be uncomfortable to wear for any length of time. More importantly, it’s easy to damage the sensitive inner ear with the kind of volume they produce. The same goes for those ubiquitous earbuds that connect kids to their phones and their music.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), earbuds might be causing teen hearing loss.
Joseph F. Hagan Jr., M.D., FAAP, co-editor of the AAP Bright Futures Guidelines explains that the noise levels produced by the kind of electronic media popular with kids can often be louder than what the law allows in a workplace setting. “We know that does cause problems with high-frequency hearing loss,” he told the AAP.
High-frequency hearing loss is the same kind of hearing loss that makes it hard for older members of the family to understand dialogue – the same kind of hearing loss that creates a need for a device to hear TV better.
Guarding against teen hearing loss
Telling a teenager that they’ll end up needing hearing devices for TV viewing in the future probably won’t make much of an impact. (We were all teenagers once; did we do the sensible things our parents told us to?)
Making teens aware of the potential damage associated with using earbuds or headphones to play music of video games at high volumes may help some kids, but in order to really make an impact and prevent this type of hearing loss, the American Academy of Pediatricians recommends screening teens for hearing damage at higher tones to determine if they have any high-frequency hearing loss.
If you worry that your teenager may eventually suffer hearing loss, you can set a positive example and show them that it’s not the end of the world and that there shouldn’t be any stigma associated with using an innovative TV listening device like ChairSpeaker, which utilizes voice-enhancing technology to compensate for high-frequency hearing loss. You ChairSpeaker system, with its superior sound quality, can also show them that headphones to hear TV – or music – may not be the best option.
If you have questions, just give us a call at 1-888-440-5273.