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Are noise-cancelling headphones to blame for young people's hearing problems?
- jmclnx 2y agoI blame it on ear buds and high volume. Edit: But the article is also about understanding speech in a noisy area. Wouldn't ADDH be a big factor ?
- masfuerte 2y agoTheir hearing is fine. The processing is wonky.
- HPsquared 2y agoI have the opposite problem: any words I hear spoken in the vicinity directly interrupt my brain's language processor (which is single-threaded) and breaks any chain of thought or writing attempt.
- adamgordonbell 2y agoI have this problem! Not 100% of the time though. Some thinking tasks are non auditory, and don't get interrupted. But yeah, is there a term for this?
- arresin 2y agoAlso the same here. And there’s nothing I can do. I can almost sweat with the effort of not heeding a background voice but I still will. Then my attention bounces back and forth.
- ddmf 2y agoI read books on auditory processing disorder about 8 to 10 years before I was diagnosed autistic.
- JadeNB 2y ago> I have the opposite problem: any words I hear spoken in the vicinity directly interrupt my brain's language processor (which is single-threaded) and breaks any chain of thought or writing attempt. And heaven forbid I try to speak a word or two while typing. Very often I type what I meant to say, and vice versa.
- marssaxman 2y agoWhen I used to play the piano, making music would occupy the language processor. If you asked me a question while I was playing, I would have to stop in order to reply; I couldn't form any words otherwise.
- bookofjoe 2y agoI wonder if Franz Liszt could've replied in a number of languages without breaking stride...
- m463 2y agoknock knock... interrupting cow...
- scotty79 2y agoI really love living in a country which languages I don't understand. I feel my brain is cosily protected when everyone around sounds like they are speaking in simlish.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- crusty 2y agoI've lived in places like that and had similar thoughts. I remember riding a subway and hearing conversations and squabbles all around me and understanding none of it. I know if I could understand the language, my brain would have been busy trying to make sense of it all and keep up, but instead, it just wasn't, and I knew in the moment that I was getting a break.
- ddmf 2y agoI can watch youtube cookery or world food with no issue, but as soon as someone "real" talks I have a buffer of about 10s before my thoughts come crashing down around me - I think it's the expectation of response, and I can only talk or listen, my verbal output is single threaded and probably running on some old crappy processor with fdiv errors.
- jweather 2y agoSame... can't read anything if I can hear someone talking, even if I don't want to listen to them. Music and noise-cancelling headphones make it all better. I can't understand anything if more than one person is talking at the same volume. Maybe that's just normal and I'm bad at lip reading, though. As far as anecdata, I've worn noise-cancelling headphones at least 40 hours a week for the past 18 years. Granted, my formative years pre-date noise cancellation, but I haven't noticed any impact to my hearing or audio processing. Pretty sure I'd be listening to music much louder without noise cancellation.
- j45 2y agoAligning visual content with the words being spoken can be helpful in cases like this. I agree that I have taken care of my hearing despite doing what I want for the most part. Now with small aliens roaming the homestead, being able to tune it out to access the well developed trained focus mode is useful. At the same time, I'm not sure if anyone's using apps like Brain.fm or Endel to help keep some noise going to the brain, just not silence. I have used brain.fm for a lot of years when I'd remember to (meaning I needed it), and recently started experimenting with Endel, which has been more useful than I anticipated.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago> I can't understand anything if more than one person is talking at the same volume. Maybe that's just normal and I'm bad at lip reading, though. I want to say it's normal, but it's also known as sensory or auditory processing disorder and it's not uncommon in neurodiverse people. Learning some lip reading or just observing someone's mouth movements helps me in those situations, but it's far from ideal.
- kibwen 2y ago> It affected her social life too and Sophie would leave bars and restaurants early because of the "overwhelming noise". This can also be attributed to enshittification. Restauranteurs and bar owners found that noisier places increase turnover and cause people to drink more.
- ARandumGuy 2y agoTotally this. Acoustics in bars and restaurants has gone completely to shit. Even if they don't turn the music up too loud, it can be extremely hard to have a conversation without shouting, even if the place isn't crowded. I understand the need to not have people linger at a popular spot, but there has to be a better way then to make the place actively unpleasant to be in.
- HPsquared 2y agoIt's also a kind of prisoner's dilemma or positive feedback loop, even without music: people in crowded bars talk loudly (especially with alcohol) which requires people nearby to talk louder to be heard, then it gets even louder and so on.
- Doxin 2y agoIn my experience that's mostly a function of how good the acoustics are. In a place with a lot of reverb that is definitely what happens. On the other hand I've been in one or two restaurants with really good acoustics. You could easily have a conversation in those even at the busiest of times. If there's no reverb your voice doesn't bounce all around the room. Your table can hear you perfectly fine, but you're basically inaudible to someone a few tables over. The background noise sounds like a pleasant murmur instead of a loud cacophony.
- dj_gitmo 2y agoI can only imagine what happens to your hearing if you work at some of these bars. Long term exposure would wreck your hearing.
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- 000ooo000 2y agoAnyone find their tinnitus got a little worse after using noise cancelling headphones?
- loco5niner 2y agoAbsolutely. They probably 10X the intensity of my every-day tinnitus.
- vermooten 2y agoYes! I love my Airpods Max more than any other headphone ever but I wear them all the time and mt tinnitus is crazy. Should stop wearing them, at least reduce.
- ne0flex 2y agoHow high do you have volume when you have the noise cancellation on? I have pretty bad tinnitus and most of my waking hours I have my AirPod Pros in but haven't noticed any increase in my tinnitus.
- Spivak 2y agoYep, even when they have sound going through them 100% of the time as to not hear my tinnitus. I would expect sudden quiet making me pay attention to it again causing it to be worse but nope, doesn't matter.
- jaxr 2y agoI get that feeling too. I have the Samsung Galaxy buds3 pro. They seem to be worse than my Bose 700. After wearing them for a while with NC, I feel like I have to take them off or turn the sound louder. I defaulted to using them with NC off unless I'm in a very loud environment.
- Hamuko 2y agoNot really but I really only use them for about 30 minutes per day as I go on a walk, so it's not prolonged exposure.
- Tor3 2y ago
- jmugan 2y agoIt seems like you would have to wear them a lot to lose the ability to filter out noise naturally. Five hours seems insufficient, even for a teen. Maybe if you wore it all day? I want noise-canceling headphones that filter out all non-natural sounds. I want to hear the birds but not people talking or leaf blowers or trucks going beep beep beep. Maybe smarter headphones are the answer (besides, of course, making the world not so damn obnoxious).
- HPsquared 2y agoIt's probably just the opposite causation: people sensitive to noise are more likely to spend £250 on noise-cancelling headphones.
- jemmyw 2y agoWhat if you don't wear it that many hours but it's all the hours you're in noisy environments? You'd lose the ability to naturally filter the noisy environments because you never experience them. I have this to far less extremes: I've always sought quiet. There nothing wrong with my hearing as tested. I can't hear people talk very well in any kind of busy situation, and it at least seems to me that other people there aren't struggling. Of course they could be and they just don't say anything about it.
- onemoresoop 2y agoI have the same issue and had it all my life but got a bit worse as I got older. I used to feel ashamed of this but no longer do as I excuse myself from environments that distress me. I’ve been thinking about hearing aids but just like you my hearing is good, it’s a processing issue and am not sure hearing aids could help. Still willing to give them a try, I heard the apple earpods pro are good at filtering out voices from a noise environment.
- 7839284023 2y agoI suffer from Misophonia and I wear my Bose QC45 10 hours+ a day - each day. Without them I could not function and they made life with Misophonia somewhat tolerable.
- retrac 2y agoThis tracks with what is known about sudden neurologically-involved hearing loss. I have a condition where the inner ear is misformed and the cochlea is, in crude terms, prone to bruising. I've hit my head and gone completely deaf on one side before, and some of my hearing came back but not all of it. This sort of injury, with the missing sensory input, triggers brain plasticity. A lot of relearning goes on very quickly. It took only a few days until voices stopped sounding like chipmunks because I could not hear the low frequencies. I still couldn't hear them but I was starting to associate the new inputs with my memories of how I remember speech sounding. If I knew the person the voice was strongly gendered as male or female - with new speakers I had trouble guessing their sex. I still do. From what little is known about this, exposure to sound is crucial during this phase. And a lot of people find it highly distressing. I was gripping my hands like in a panic/stress reaction when out in public in noisy environments. It is, paradoxically considering the quasi-deafness, a kind of sensory overload. Sounds I couldn't identify, coming from the wrong direction, with human voices sounding like garbled squeaks. A common reaction is to withdraw. But this almost certainly prevents relearning during the crucial phase of plasticity. I wish I had forced myself to go to more restaurants etc. immediately after, in hindsight. I suspect it may have resulted in less tinnitus long-term if I had done so. This is so little studied it surprised me how little is out there when I went researching on what the best conditions to expose myself to after. I kind of had to make up a protocol myself.
- flir 2y ago> This sort of injury, with the missing sensory input, triggers brain plasticity Huh. Charles Bonnet syndrome?
- torginus 2y agoI have another, much simpler guess - these headphones are dirty, and people are constantly wearing them, and cleaning them is pretty hard without damaging something - so most people just don't. This leads them to be an ideal breeding ground of bacteria, and a constant source of ear infections. I'd say that's something that can pretty directly lead to hearing loss.
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- morninglight 2y ago[flagged]
- HPsquared 2y agoWhile we're on noise-cancelling headphones, this reminds me of a recent experience on a train (in the quiet carriage, of course) wearing my noise-cancelling headphones. There was a toddler crying and screaming loudly and the sound seemed to cut right through the headphones. I wonder if they're somehow tuned to not block certain sounds (Sony WH-1000XM4).
- jclulow 2y agoI would think there'd be a lot of utility in not blocking smoke alarm sounds, for example. The screeching from distressed infants can similarly be both very loud and very high pitched.
- mrtesthah 2y agoInfants scream at the resonant frequency of the human ear canal, about 3000 hz
- FergusArgyll 2y agoI'm trying to search this and it seems the numbers for both (ear canal and infants cries) are all over the place. Do you have a specific article about the connection? Interesting if true...
- 000ooo000 2y agoI was once interested in music production, and I heard a tip to cut a notch in that frequency range to reduce perceived harshness that is speculated to be due to our sensitivity to infant cries. I can't help with a source but maybe that angle might yield something.
- malfist 2y agoThey're not, it's just the physics of sound cancelation. Some frequencies, especially higher, irregular ones are harder to block, just because the microprocessor doesn't have enough time to react
- metalmangler 2y agocould be.... did a course for sound engineer, but didnt like the music biz, but still love sound... human hearing is a very funny thing, part mechanical, part electrical impulse, with some rather sophisticted processing going on in.that if you listen to a concert piano bieng played back on an ancient taped deck.with a 1 7/8” speaker, that speaker is incapable of reproducing the low c, but you will hear it, because you can hear the harmonics of that low c, and your brain fills in the "obvious" fundamental tone. which means that we are always "hearing things":) other wierd stuff, like going into an anekoic chamber, and sitting quietly, of which I have not done, but is apparently rather odd. so it is possible that "noise cancelling" which is just enough processing to create a sound wave 180°out of phase to the "noise", could be messing with peoples brains, as it trys to out process the very unnatural digital processing.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jdeaton 2y agoMaybe shes wearing those noise canceling headphones because of her auditory processing condition and not the other way around?? This seems like basic speculative attribution error- no research here.
- izzydata 2y agoThis would be my guess as it sounds similar to what I experience and have been experiencing for decades long before any king of noise cancelling headphones. I find it very difficult to process noises when there are too many occurring at once and adding voices into the mix will make it look like I am lagging trying to respond. I have no idea what the underlying condition is, but I consider this problem to be called "misophonia". I think it is about not being able to filter sounds well. Thankfully I'm not regularly in an environment that force me to wear noise cancelling headphones. Sometimes I believe this was caused by my childhood bedroom being soundproofed, but I still went to noisy public school so who knows.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIt wouldn’t surprise me. I can definitely feel a ‘pressurization’ when wearing headphones or earbuds with noise cancellation. That isn’t the “natural” way our ears operate so there must be some side effects. But I wonder if the same would be true for wearing ear plugs or earbuds that don’t have active noise cancellation but sit tightly in your canal.
- PlunderBunny 2y agoI feel that 'pressurisation' too with my AirPods Pro (in-ear speakers) - it becomes increasingly uncomfortable, so that after about 20 minutes I have to turn it off. With the same pair of earbuds with noise cancellation off, I don't have the problem.
- krupan 2y agoInteresting thinking about this being connected with young people using subtitles all the time. I've been using noise isolating and active noise cancelling earbuds and headphones for a good 20 years while working in noisy cubicle farms, open office plans, and working at home with kids around, and I don't think I have the problems cited here. Is it an age related thing? I didn't start with the headphones until I was in my mid 20's
- JadeNB 2y ago> Interesting thinking about this being connected with young people using subtitles all the time. For what it's worth, I've used subtitles whenever possible ever since that became a thing, more or less with the advent of DVDs, which was in my teens to twenties. But I do also have childhood hearing damage in one ear.
- arp242 2y ago> [..] suggests that by blocking everyday sounds such as cars beeping, there is a possibility the brain can "forget" to filter out the noise. > "You have almost created this false environment by wearing those headphones of only listening to what you want to listen to. You are not having to work at it," she said. Ah yes, the natural peaceful environment of car horns blowing at >100 decibels. Look, any research in any medical condition is always useful. But the entire article doesn't mention a word on the real problem: the world has just gotten too damn loud. Car horns are loud enough to cause hearing damage even at short exposure, as is extended exposure to traffic. So yeah, maybe we should primarily be looking at the modern hellscape that we've created instead of looking at the ways people use to manage this.
- SebFender 2y agoI think many people aren't super interested in hearing. Many times I find repeating things to my younger team members and gradually it started being something. Not about hearing, I think it's a way of being and trust me I'm not the only one noticing this. We've even had talks with HR to see how we could adapt as honestly I thought at some point I was the one with challenges transmitting things. Listening to everyone and everything in many instances is critical to problem solving... Anyone else?
- wink 2y agoThe rise of video tutorials over written text kinda lets me think that's not a general problem but I've also always preferred written information over audio (in school, in uni, sometimes for talks - not so much for conversations, but even then I have trouble remembering details, compared to reading).
- tippytippytango 2y agoI like to play white noise or coffee shop ambiance on my noise canceling headphones, I wonder if that helps?
- NikkiA 2y agoAs a hyperacusis sufferer that has never used noise-cancelling headphones, I'd have to say 'unlikely', my hyperacusis came with my anxiety - something many of the people in the article have too - and largely seems to be triggered by modern car-focused town design, and constantly being battered by loud engine sounds, revving engines and other annoyances.
- tessierashpool9 2y agoi confirm your hypothesis and would like to add myself to your sample.
- loco5niner 2y agoPersonal anecdote: I have tinnitus and noise-cancelling headphones sets it off worse than regular headphones. As in, I always have a constant low-level ringing, but certain triggers can 10X or 100X the intensity. As a developer, I was a heavy user of noise canceling headphones before this.
- sharpshadow 2y agoI personally dislike having Bluetooth receivers pressed against my skull or even placing it inside my cavities therefore trying to use it as little as possible. Overtime I got more electro sensitive and when there are to many wireless devices around me I get a type of temporary tinnitus which persist for a while. Grounding myself helps to relieve it. I mean think about it couple of decades ago there wasn’t even one wireless device around now I receive alone 40 router signals in my apartment building. When everybody is at home in the evening I feel the electro smog tinnitus the strongest.