An alarming new trend among young people which could negatively affect the students here on the SUNY Suffolk Ammerman Campus has recently been brought forth by the National Health Service of England and is now drawing the attention of health experts worldwide.
As reported by the BBC, five NHS audiology departments have expressed concerns over an increase in the number of young people throughout the UK experiencing hearing impairment issues.
The believed cause for the hearing impairments – noise-reducing headphones.
The NHS, which is the United Kingdom’s publicly funded healthcare system, believes noise-reducing headphones may be the cause of various hearing impairments because many of the young people reporting hearing issues are surprisingly testing “normal” when given auditory tests.
This fact has led the NHS to now believe that these young people’s hearing impairments may be linked with their brain’s development and cognitive functioning rather than any physical damage done to their ears.
As one can imagine, this news had mixed responses when brought to the attention of various students here on the Ammerman Campus.
When made aware of the recent news coming out of England, Michael Wheeler, a Business major and Director of Media and Social Media Events on the Ammerman Campus, was skeptical.
“They said the same thing about cell phones a couple of years ago. That being on your cell phone was causing brain damage or cancer,” said Wheeler.
“It’s always something new. Next month it will be something else. Some scientists will be saying something else,” Wheeler added.
Having not experienced any hearing or concentration issues himself, Wheeler stressed the convenience of noise-canceling headphones saying, “I hate holding my phone.”
“I walked around with my phone on speaker because I just can’t put it to my ears. It starts hurting your arms, phones are bigger now; it’s crazy,” Wheeler further stressed after having explained that he had gone the past four to five months without his earphones.
“I am glad I got my Beats back,” stated Wheeler
Convenient or not, of major concern is the fact that the auditory impairments being reported by the NHS commonly involve one’s inability to focus on a particular sound or noise when in the context of numerous other sounds or noises.
Individuals also frequently report feeling overwhelmed when in the context of a noisy environment as well as misidentifying where a sound may be coming from or who is directly speaking to them.
Unlike Wheeler, Lexi Primerano, a Broadcasting major and President of the Broadcasting Club on the Ammerman Campus, did feel she may be experiencing some similar hearing and concentration issues as being reported by the NHS.
“Now that I am thinking about my hearing, I am that person that is very like, ‘huh?’, like, ‘what?’, like, ‘say that again,’” explained Primerano.
Primerano further added that she found noisy environments to be “more overstimulating than anything,” but also stressed that other factors could be at play.
“In our craft, our major, we have to do a lot of wearing headphones, we talk in headsets so it’s hard to tell whether it’s malfunctioning with the headsets, if they are too low or if I cannot hear them,” said Primerano.
With concerns mounting over the issue, NHS audiologists are calling for more research to be conducted into whether noise-reducing headphones are indeed detrimental to an individual’s hearing ability.
The jury may still be out if noise-reducing headphones are causing hearing or concentration problems among young people, and while some Ammerman students like Wheeler are not overly concerned, others are.
Echoing that sentiment was Primerano who said, “If it is causing hearing impairments for this generation, then what will it do if normalized? We do not even know the long-term effects yet!”
