1/4 of college students substantially harming their hearing

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Researchers from the University of Florida concluded that up to one-fourth of college students suffer from substantial hearing loss. This begs the question: just what is causing healthy twenty-one-year-olds to lose their hearing so rapidly? After days of wrangling over research and manipulating variables, the experimenters came to the same conclusion that you and I and virtually every college student in the universe would have come to in a matter of seconds: MP3 players.

In fact, the study found that students exhibiting the highest levels of hearing loss were males who said they used MP3 devices regularly (presumably while working out). This may seem like common sense, but don’t discount the findings just yet; average loss exceeded an alarming 15 decibels—an amount that, while it doesn’t quite require a hearing aid, could impair the ability to learn and even to distinguish between important variations in speech. In other words, this much hearing loss could have a substantial, negative impact on your social and academic life.

So all this sounds pretty dire, but will it change the way students listen to music? Maybe. As for me… well, I’ve been sufficiently frightened to the point that I plan on toning down Eminem a bit next time I go to the gym.