Are Your Kids Using Headphones More In Lockdown?
By: Ronald Yip
Tags: Education, Headphones, Kids, Covid 19, Amazon

Are Your Kids Using Headphones More In Lockdown?

Excessive Use of Headphones or Ear Buds Leads to Partial or Permanent Hearing Loss. Ronald Yip Jun 17·3 min read

Are you noticing some hearing issues in your children? Are they using too many cell phones and accessories in lockdown because they are free? Are you hearing too much loud music coming out of their headphones? If your answer to all these questions is yes, then it’s an alarming situation, and you need to pay attention to the problem. Being a parent, you have to monitor and minimize your children’s exposure to headphones.

Here I am sharing some points to identify if your child has hearing issues and how you can protect hearing.

How to Identify Hearing Problems in Your Child?

Being a parent, you have concerns about your child’s hearing issues, mainly when he is into the excessive use of cell phones and accessories. Here I am sharing few tactics to check if your child’s hearing is being affected or going well.

If your child is watching television at a high volume, it’s a sign that he is having a hearing issue.

If your child is avoiding gatherings because he faces problems in listening due to the noises in gathering.

If your child frequently asks to repeat what you are saying or demands to speak to him with pauses.

If your child is having difficulty in hearing high-pitched sounds like the doorbell, phone ringtone, etc.

If your child is facing disturbance in distinguishing consonant sounds.

How are the loud noises affecting your child’s hearing capability?

Every individual is born with 16000 hair cells in his inner ear cochlea that get damaged when exposed to loud noises or excessive noises. This exposure can be in watching excessive television, using too many cellphones and accessories like using earphones at high or even low volume for more time. These lay a very negative effect on the hair in the cochlea and shoot them dead, leading to partial or sometimes permanent hearing loss. The most dangerous among all is excessive use of headphones, as a person is exposed to the sounds from a very minute distance that affects ears directly. As a result, a person suffers partial deafness or noise-induced hearing loss.

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 85 decibels is the sound level that starts damaging the hearing, and an mp3 player at 70 percent of its volume is 85 decibels. Hence, it’s evident that raising sound to the full or listening via headphones can lead to severe hearing issues.

How can a child’s hearing be protected?

Photo by Alphacolor on Unsplash

The best thing to do for protecting hearing is the minimal use of headphones and earbuds. But suppose the use of headphones is necessary for your kid, i.e., during a lockdown. In that case, he may have to listen to his online lectures and educational audios, go with a quality headphone. Most people confuse headphones with earbuds, but they are different; the former sits over the ear completely, while the latter fits in your ear. Further, using high-quality noise-canceling headphones also helps in listening at a reasonable volume as they resist interruption due to external noises; therefore, the child will not need to raise the volume. These strategies will help you in protecting your child’s hearing.

Make the best possible efforts to ensure your child’s hearing ability. And, if the problem gets severe, do consult the doctor for proper advice.