Admit it: at some point you were seduced by an old iPod commercial. You danced along to The Fratellis, wishing you were a silouette with not a care in the world except looking good against your neon-colored background. Unfortunately, life doesn’t have minimalist scenery and society frowns upon black skintight bodysuits in public, so we’re left with a single component of our favorite commercial fantasy: a snazzy pair of white Apple earbuds.
Though music may be good for our souls, with the advent of the earbuds it may no longer be good for our ears. The problem with earbuds is that they get much closer to your eardrum than those earmuff-style of yore headphones ever could. They also are not typically padded with foam, so sound reaches your eardrum at full force. The long-lasting battery life of iPods doesn’t help either, since we tend to take advantage of the ability to enjoy prolonged exposure to noise. And not just any kind of noise, either—loud noise. We are all guilty of cranking the volume up so high that the person sitting next to us knows exactly what song we’re playing.
And having the person on the next bike over at Yates know you’re a closet Justin Bieber fan is damaging to more than just your reputation. The combination of proximity and prolonged exposure frequently leads to hearing loss, something you might not even notice until it’s too late.
When it comes to your hearing, there is such a thing as too late. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and there isn’t much you can do to get it back. Your ear canal contains fine pieces of hair that are designed to pick up on sound vibrations and send them directly to the ear drum. Those hairs are extremely delicate. Jamming an earbud up against them and playing loud music can destroy those hairs, and little by little, they begin to disappear. The fewer there are, the less you will be able to hear, since there won’t be much left to pick up incoming sound waves.
Most audiologists recommend using earbuds for no more than an hour a day, and at less than sixty percent of the maximum volume. Period of exposure and volume are the two factors that balance the equation, so if you cut down on one, you can have a bit more of the other, but you have to sacrifice somewhere.
Another option is to get a hold of sound-canceling headphones—without the distraction of background noise, there is no need to crank the volume all the way up.
Your hearing isn’t the only thing that earbud use puts in danger. While earbuds are great for sharing music with friends, they are also great for sharing and spreading bacterial infections, and for helping them build up in the first place. Snug-fitting earbuds cause the ear canal to become moist, which creates ideal conditions for bacterial growth. Earbuds can also pick up bacteria outside and around our ears and send it directly into the ear canal. Since our ear canals don’t get cleaned out on a regular basis, or perhaps ever, it is best to keep them as free of bacteria as possible.
Nobody wants to be that kid in the back of Leo’s with the huge headphones, so many see earbuds as a sleek, discrete alternative. And who wants to cut back on music? For some, music is the primary form of distraction, and for others, it is a necessary study tool—so limiting ourselves to just an hour a day isn’t going to work. But if you care at all about your hearing, you need to make a change. Turn it down or turn it off—at least for a few hours of the day.
Crank up the volume with Sadaf at squreshi@georgetownvoice.com
