Loud music makes you dumb!

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Gifting an iPod or an MP3 player to your child for scoring good grades in an exam may fetch that smile and those brownie points but you could be causing a lot of damage in the entire process.

According to a recent study that has been making ripples across health circles in the US, one out of five American children has developed hearing loss to varying extents. With earphones constantly glued to their ears, iPods and MP3 players are the most obvious culprits. Our own teens can barely be recognized without a cellphone or an iPod attached to their ears like an extra appendage.

The city’s ENT specialists believe constant exposure to loud music is the single-largest reason for hearing loss. Dr Sharad Bhalekar, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon with D Y Patil Hospital in Nerul, feels, “The ill-effects of noisepollution can be seen in people subjected to prolonged exposure to high noise decibel level of more than 80dB (A) Leq (energy mean of the noise level).

Apparently, this number seems to have increased three fold in the past 15 years. Sadly, while others are a lot more sensitive, almost every teenager just has to walk around with his personal music to make a cool statement or risk being considered and outsider. What these kids don’t realise is hearing loud music constantly can create hearing loss which in turn hampers language and...intellectual development!

Going by the statistics of the young getting deafer and, concurrently, dumber, it just isn’t funny. So, the next time you see a teenager walking around with his or her ears plugged into earphones, it might make sense to stop and drop that warning. It won’t be easy or even pleasant – but someone’s got to do it.