Audiologists raise concern over headphone use in young people
Audiologists raise concern over headphone use in young people
More young people are presenting to audiology teams in England with difficulty processing sound.
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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.
her audiologist believes
(emphasis mine). Belief is colloquial speech for working hypothesis. Her prescription will have been along the lines of "ease on those headphones, go to a forest or park and just listen, use them only if you really feel them to be necessary, try to expose yourself".
"Nothing can ever be acted upon unless we have a meta-study examining fifty double-blind studies" is pseudoscepticism.
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.
According to this articles methods we know that noise cancelling headphones kill people, since everyone who uses them dies! (Eventually and yes /s)
eh, I don't see a problem with this article specifically, and I don't think your "cancer" hyperbole is helpful. If people feel like they are suffering from a similar listening/attention issue, there's no real harm in trying to go without noise-cancelling for a while to see if the symptoms improve.
Sure, but it's still pretty irresponsible of the BBC to publish what is effectively educated guesses as something to be concerned about.
This belongs in an academic article. Not a news one.
No it’s not. Experts in their field are seeing a strong correlation in behaviors that could harm your health. It’s the perfect place for an audiologist to speak to this issue.
And they also have a theoretical basis for their hypothesis. You don't have to have 100% experimental proof about something to take initial action, especially to avoid harm.
Because that worked so well for
Dr.WakefieldNot at all the same thing. There was tons of evidence and theory that vaccines were safe, and the consequences of not using them were very high.
And yet that didn't stop the ACTUAL harm it caused.
Right
We also had an expert who started the vacines cause autism trying to peddle a new replacement for the MMR vaccine. (This is my opinion based on the research done Here )Just because "an expert" says something, doesn't mean it's true. And blindly listening to them can cause harm as well.
This is a fallacy called Argument of authority
No, it's completely irresponsible to say something not peer reviewed and actually studied.
There was never even a shred of proper science behind the autism causes vaccines thing, and it was a very very very very minority opinion.
Does gravity exist on Alpha Centrauri? Ask any physicist, they're going to say "yes". You're then going to stand there, saying "we have not actually made the necessary experiments on Alpha Centauri itself, we do not have conclusive evidence, all those people are peddling pseudoscience". Never mind that all that we know about physics leads us to the extrapolation that, yes, gravity exists there and we have no reason to think why there isn't gravity there. Could that extrapolation be wrong? Yes. But it's also a silly thing to insist onto working into the plans of a colonialisation spaceship. All you're achieving with that is having it never be built, bogging shit down in unsubstantiated scepticism.
You are right there's never been any credible evidence.
But I wasn't claiming that.
I was claiming it was irresponsible to report on such an early finding in the media without proper verification and actual conclusive studies.
Almost like the BBC article here in question.
They're reporting on what the audiologists observe and believe to be the case, and clearly label it as such: A belief, with further study necessary. People thinking they could be affected by this might take action after reading the article, true, and the action would be -- easing off on using sound-cancelling headphones. That could, in the end, not help. What would be the harm done? Neither the science was misrepresented, it was portrayed as incomplete, "here's our educated guess", and the recommendations one can draw from that guess are quite inconceivable to cause harm themselves.
Have a look again at what the Hippocratic oath states: First, do no harm. They're keeping to that. Ease off. You can tell a patient to try dialling back on their coffee consumption before having conclusive proof that that's what's causing their jitters: Less coffee won't kill them.
You say this like pilots, young and old, haven't been using ANC headphones for decades safely at this point.
And no, just because someone says something could be a risk, doesn't mean we all respond. I mean that's literally the lesson we learned from the vacines cause autism. What are you even talking about it's okay to just wildly speculate.
There's a marked difference between using headphones to cancel out deafening noises while you're working, and using them all the time to get rid of everyday noise. There's also a clear difference in age, once you're a pilot and start wearing those things you're fully grown, while the affected here are quite younger, having used those headphones extensively while their brains are still way more plastic.
"Noise-cancelling is dangerous in general" is something you read into the article. It's not actually there. What it's saying is "young people should watch their use of noise-cancelling headphones as the auditory system needs exposure to noise to properly develop". That's it. It's a "young people, have an eye on this" thing, not "burn your headphones".
What are you even talking about it’s okay to just wildly speculate.
I said no such thing. Here's a wild speculation: You have noise-cancelling headphones and somehow interpret the article as a personal attack. Ok that wasn't wild it has actually some basis. This is wild: You're an alien from Alpha Cenauri trying to sow misinformation about the existence of zero-gravity space in your solar system. I'm Schizotypal, dare me, I can go on all day like that if you want to.
Fun fact. In North America you can get your pilots license at 16 in Canada and I believe the US, and yet there's been nothing reported there? So nope still don't buy it.
And where do you think ANC tech was developed? Bose literally made their name in aviation headsets.
"Noise-cancelling is dangerous in general" is something you read into the article. It's not actually there. What it's saying is "young people should watch their use of noise-cancelling headphones as the auditory system needs exposure to noise to properly develop". That's it. It's a "young people, have an eye on this" thing, not "burn your headphones".
Your still listening to someone just shouting into a microphone. Why should I take them seriously?
If a hypothesis is untestable, then it is a guess, and not scientific.
it's not untestable, they just haven't actually done it yet. In fact they say in the article research is needed.