Audiologists raise concern over headphone use in young people
More young people are presenting to audiology teams in England with difficulty processing sound.
People with APD now have access to ANC headphones and are thus using them.
I had APD in the 70s and I have it now. Difference is that i have ANC headphones now and can get them to block out what my brain won't.
Like the rise in ADHD and Autism diagnosis... There isn't more cases, just diagnosis got better or more available.
Correlation not causation.
Idiots.
Like the rise in ADHD and Autism diagnosis... There isn't more cases, just diagnosis got better or more available.
It's both.
We're finding that even things like microplastics are causing changes that's not fully understood. There's even a recent study that links an increase in histamine to worsened ADHD symptoms.
And then there are things like poor sleep hygiene when very young can trigger a development of ADHD later on.
And then there are things like poor sleep hygiene when very young
can trigger acorrelates with the development of ADHD later on.
FTFY. Correlation≠Causation, especially in cases like you mentioned. It’s a chicken and egg scenario.
Are kids getting ADHD because they didn’t sleep well? Or is poor sleep hygiene an early indicator of ADHD? Lots of people with ADHD have poor sleep hygiene, even as adults. Many will struggle with things like Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, because they get their biggest bursts of focus late at night when everyone else is asleep, the brain is releasing dopamine to keep them awake, and distractions are limited. Every single adult with ADHD has stories about getting focused on a project right before bedtime, then suddenly realizing the birds are chirping outside their window and the sun is rising.
ASD !(APD || ANC) FFS
I'm wondering if the cause and effect are the other way around, people that have trouble with noise (such as people with APD) might want noise cancelling headphones. The rise in cases of APD might indicate otherwise, but with the information provided, it sounds like it might be under-diagnosed anyway.
The first thing many people used to assume is that if you had any problems with listening, you might be somewhat deaf. APD and other difficulties listening definitely aren't deafness, but I wonder if there is increased awareness of other reasons why someone might have difficulty understanding speech.
but her audiologist believes the overuse of noise-cancelling headphones, which Sophie wears for up to five hours a day, could have a part to play.
Me, wearing my noise-cancelling headphones for 10+ hours a day ....
I have my noise cancelling airpods pro, but never use ANC because it has that white noise sound I don't like. It's basically blasting more noise in your earhole to drown out/cancel out the noise around you.
Yeah, ANC quality can vary a lot and generally it's even worse for earbuds.
I have a pair of Bose QC Ultra headphones which have amazing ANC.
A few month back there was a constuction site across the street. At one point I felt my desk vibrating, so I took of my headphones ... only then did I realised they were using a jackhammer.
As the world become more and more noisy. And people become more a more shitty with regards of doing noise without care about how it affects others. ANC become a necessity for some people.
The cause of Sophie's APD diagnosis is unknown, but her audiologist believes the overuse of noise-cancelling headphones, which Sophie wears for up to five hours a day, could have a part to play.
So fucking stupid...
Kid grew up on a quiet farm in the countryside, then she moved to London and probably 100+ student plus lectures.
It's not that noise cancelling headphones prevented her from developing normally, she developed in an environment like what we evolved to handle.
Then she got thrown into a cacophony of sound that is one of the planets largest/busiest cities...
And they act like she is the problem and not noise pollution?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-024-00642-5
Noise pollution is fucking a lot of us up, and people who grew up with it are used to it, but that doesn't stop the negative consequences of it. Someone that never had to deal with it is obviously going to have what looks like a sudden onset of a condition, but the person is fine.
The environment is the problem.
My tolerance of noise and light pollution has gone way the hell down as I have gotten older. I want to live in the woods at this point.
People are posting about wanting to run away to the woods but I think it's important to remember that cities can be quiet.
Not that we should all move to Delft, but if we built infrastructure for people instead of cars cities wouldn't be so fucking loud.
She is just an example, they say this issue is on the rise in general.
Five NHS audiology departments have told the BBC that there has been an increase in the number of young people referred to them from GPs with hearing issues - only to find their hearing is normal when tested and it is their ability to process sound that is struggling.
APD is more common in neurodivergent people, those who have suffered from a brain injury or had a middle-ear infection as a child. However, more patients with APD are presenting outside of those categories, leaving audiologists to question if external factors, such as noise-cancelling headphones, are contributing.
The cause of Sophie's APD diagnosis is unknown, but her audiologist believes the overuse of noise-cancelling headphones, which Sophie wears for up to five hours a day, could have a part to play.
Other audiologists agree, saying more research is needed into the potential effects of their prolonged use.
That looks to me like, "audiologists have no bloody clue where this issue is coming from, and are therefore throwing shit at the wall in the hope that something will stick."
Nope it's a very reasonable hypothesis. "Symptom X suddenly occurs frequently. That started when people started doing Y. According to our understanding, Y has a direct impact on the functioning of X". Causation has still to be established formally but it'd be quite surprising if it was mere correlation, as in it would overturn the understanding audiologists have about how things work.
Bluntly said: If you never train filtering out noise, then you suck at filtering out noise. That looks dead obvious, if it's wrong, then in a very, very interesting way. General relativity vs. Newtonian mechanics kind of interesting.
The problem is not the hypothesis, the problem is that it isn't really presented as a hypothesis. Reporting on the results before doing the experiment isn't the way to go.
Our theories of how the world works are necessarily incomplete, and experiments turn up things that overturn scientific understanding often enough. The way this is set up matches a common pattern of vilifying tech without seeing whether it's deserved or not. Maybe not wearing a noise cancellation headset would, in fact, help this patient, but until that's tested and found out to be true, reporting on it is just spreading FUD.
Exactly.
Is she wearing high heels every day? Could be bullshit, but could be related. 🙄
This is not the same thing, as the other comment explains.
I really struggle to process voices, but I hear absolutely everything.
Someone talking to me can get completely drowned out by a 15KHz hum of an electronic device, the acoustics of a room or a TV in the background.
Yet, I ask them if they are having trouble hearing me over all the noise. They usually reply "wharlt noise?" If it's a high-pitch hum, they won't acknowledge the noise even if I show them on a spectral analyser.
If it's a high-pitched hum, they may genuinely be unable to hear it. It's common for people to lose their hearing in very high registers quickly as they age (like, most teens still hear them, but thirty-somethings mostly don't). Without noticing, since it doesn't impede day-to-day communication.
that's how science works until you can actually test the hypotheses.
Studying sure. But this is openly speculating to the uninformed masses. Can earphones cause cancer? Unless you can prove they don't, that is a hypothesis that could be tested. But more importantly, it's slop for clickbait bullshit so your aunt can post that to Facebook and feel superior to all the dregs giving themselves cancer by wearing earphones. It's useless.
I am 29 and I already have minuscule hearing loss (if results of the last hearing test were factual), and I don't really listen to music/podcasts on headphones that much either.
I am also one of these people who still has regular PC speakers instead of gaming headsets or whatever.
So wait, I'm not just a grumpy old man who doesn't like a lot of noise, this is actually a disorder?
Honestly though it's an interesting question and I wonder if this is just the "natural state." I really started to feel it after I went RVing for a year. It's a relatively recent (in the overall span of humanity) development that people would be in groups large enough to make this be an issue.
I am glad to see us respect our link-aggregation heritage of ignoring the article and starting heated discussions based on what we infer from the headline. 😂
It also seems that the headline currently on the article is different and switches out clickbait tactics from misleading omission to absurd pearl-clutching: "Are noise-cancelling headphones to blame for young people's hearing problems?" If you combine them, you get something closer to actual content of the article.
It also seems that the headline currently on the article is different and switches out
Both are present in the article; they don't switch out. One is the title (as you can see in the title bar of a desktop web browser) and the other is the top-level heading of the text.
Looks like Lemmy picked up the former, which makes sense considering the document structure. BBC probably should have used the same phrase in both places.
I poked around a few other articles. A few are identical. Most are slight variations. Few are as different as these two. My guess would be that the original submission from the author or initial editor locks in a headline for the tab/title bar, but then the CMS lets them edit what appears in the main body of the webpage.
Article literally starts off just describing my ADHD related auditory processing difficulties, which is interesting for their claims because I don't often listen to music in the first place because of it.
The only thing I use my headphones for are podcasts and audio books that I have rewind because I forgot I was listening to something.
My knee jerk response as a result is that it's probably just younger people being more comfortable admitting something is wrong and looking for an explanation from the wrong people. They note that it is prevalent in aneurotypical people but don't seem to have questioned that maybe these people simply aren't diagnosed properly.
It's especially interesting that they chose a woman as the focus for the article, with women being demonstrably underdiagnosed in particular.
Yeah those first couple paragraphs were just “ADHD/autistic woman behaves like an ADHD/autistic woman. Time to blame her for using accommodation equipment!” (Not actually Dx’ing her, but I recognize a lot of my own patterns here).
Like for fuck’s sake let us have our small bits of sanity. Tuning out the constant hell that is everyday life is not a sin.
...podcasts and audio books that I have rewind because I forgot I was listening to something.
I sad chuckled because I am the same. On the other hand, I listen to glitchy electronic music with irregular patterns on my headphones in order to concentrate on a task. My brain tunes out the mayhem and focuses on the task at hand. Imagine a screen full of jumbled, ever changing imagery with a single fly crawling across it, but in sound. My brain will focus on the "fly" and blur out the rest because it makes no sense.
Listening to proper music has the opposite effect where it will immediately trigger my mental wanderings.
Bad title. The article examines whether specifically noise-cancelling headphones may be involved in listening issues.
Oh boy I hope not, I love noise cancelation lol. I figure it's gotta be better than upping the volume to override the noise around me.
Maybe if they weren't all in tiny cramped apartments with paper-thin walls and multiple roommates they wouldn't need to wear headphones all the time.
Also, voice chat doesn't work very well with speakers and microphone without a lot feedback.
I'm not buying it that it is headphone-related. I wear headphones nearly all of the time, I've listened to music loudly for years on end, I've had to deal with loud screeches, loud noise wherever I go, lived and worked.
It is totally an environmental thing. Plus, the article had already wrapped up what the problem was and a normal hearing test came back negative.
But they haaaaaad to find a reason in the next line. Just had to.
Have fun. I have Tinnitus.
From just headphone use? No, disagreed. From loud music? I used it as an example, I don't listen to loud music constantly as much anymore. You can't avoid Tinnitus because even if you didn't listen to loud music all of the time, being surrounded by loud noise in general will eventually get you there. I work in a store where people slam pallets down (for no stupid reason), screech pallet jacks, have noisy pallet jacks in general, ladder carts squeal and screech. We're not allowed to protect our ears because "CONSOOMER FIRST" priority.
Plus, where I live, people slam their doors around, they holler, babies and kids throwing fits. Yeah, it doesn't matter if I listen to loud music or not, I will develop Tinnitus because of the environments. It's an environment thing.
they're not saying it's a headphones thing in general. they're saying it may be a noise-cancelling headphones thing.
Did the boomboxes-next-to-heads and the walkmans of the '80s and discmans of the '90s not count? I think a lot of game boy users also used headhpones.
I actually didn't use them that much at all, but I still have trouble hearing with background noise. Noise-cancelling headphones have actually been an amazing thing in my life because (a) it helps overstimulation and anxiety and (b) it actually helps me hear someone talking to me because it filters out the other stuff. I suspect my problems are a combination of mostly-neurological (ADHD and probably (though not officially) ASD) and maybe impacted by loud concerts and general aging-related stuff. I can still hear really high-pitched sounds and the like whereas many of my peers around my age and younger can't as well, but it's all mud to me when there's a lot of sound.
this isn't a hearing loss issue, the hypothesis is that noise-cancelling headphones specifically are causing our brains to not filter out random noises neurologically.
True. They also mention the person's rural upbringing and then moving to the city. That mirrors my experience and my hearing issues pre-date using noise canceling headphones. I always had a rough time anywhere there were lots of people and noise, but it just wasn't super common previously (I grew up in rural Ohio and have lived in some big US cities.followed by nearly a decade in Tokyo).
Maybe try McDonald's workers for further research, if it's the constant and annoying beeping of machines. Or any Japanese store where you get 3 songs blaring at the same time from different aisles, then there's some offering on a seperate stand, of course also blinking and begging for attention with additional sounds... I believe you can simulate 10 years of UK longterm exposure with a one day trip to Japan.
I knew earphones made you lose your hearing faster but headphones causing issues too? Guess the only safe option are speakers :/
Next DIY project found!
I pretty much never go outside without headphones now. I haven't noticed any problems with comprehending speech or sounds like described here. Sensory issues (as in being easily overwhelmed) were long gone before I got addicted to headphones. However, mother complains I am constantly speaking too loud without even recognizing it, and blames it on my hearing loss. However, I KNOW my hearing is good, because I can still hear a subtle shrill sound of a power supply on the other end of the room, even loudly enough to be bothered by it! I wonder if this could be because of headphones, that just feels peculiar.
Yeah that could be, if the headphones make you sound quieter to yourself.
Personally I have the opposite problem, when I wear earplugs out at a loud venue, I can hear myself better and end up talking too quietly.
I mean this happens in conversations, after some time has passed since I've worn headphones.
I kinda regard ANC and smart watches as pacifiers for adults. The real world is only going to hurt more the longer you stay attached to the teat.
Do you feel the same about other wearable tech, like clothes and shoes?
A bit with shoes if worn all the time. They destroy your arches, toe splay, and hip alignment with your spine. And you become dependant because your feet get so soft and sensitive. Plus people drag those dirty things all over their homes.
Calling shoes and clothes wearable tech is quite a stretch. Particularly compared to smart watches and headphones. Why did you make that false equivalence?
WHAT?
OKAAAY
I actually got this and now I feel terribly old. Thanks...
HUH?
So this could be boiled down to "use or lose it". Idk, maybe this might be part of it. Maybe a part of the prevalence of short form media blah blah attention span.
I had a pair of noise cancelling headphones when I was in like seventh or eighth grade, but when they broke, I just never ended up replacing them, and I've never had noise cancelling headphones ever since.
'Words sound like gibberish'
What? This article is confusing as hell.
I use mine a lot, but I don't have problems telling where sounds are coming from or understanding what is being said.
Tbh this just sounds like ADHD or something.
Tbh this just sounds like ADHD or something.
It's APD (Auditory Processing Disorder). That's explained in the article.
Guess I didn't read that far 😅
"It doesn't happen to me, so it must not be a real thing"
