Impacts Of Using Headphones And Earbuds

With the increased use of virtual platforms for work and school, can an overuse of earbuds and headphones be damaging to your ears?

Audiology Doctor Anne-Marie Calkins said hearing loss is possible but mostly unlikely. She said children are more susceptible to hearing loss than adults.

“You can damage the innermost part of the ear and maybe not see the affects of that for a while,” Calkins said. “We have several different tests that measures those kinds of things more than just a typical hearing, you know, raise your hand type of test.”

Calkins said keeping your device at a reasonable level could reduce hearing loss chances. If the audio is loud enough to where you cannot hear your surroundings, she said it’s too loud. She also suggests turning your speaker on.

“You definitely want to give yourself breaks when you can,” Calkins said. “You don’t want to have them in for a lengthy period of time, you know, hours on end I would say.”

Studies are constantly preformed to determine the correlation between hearing loss and ear devices.

Calkins said over time our environment has become increasingly louder.

“If you think about just our day-to-day environments we’re getting exposed to a lot of sounds and news and things like that,” Calkins said. “You know even when you pump gas there’s a television there now, you know, so things like that.”

Calkins is part owner of the Audiology and Hearing Center in Cookeville and McMinnville.