Teens & Hearing Loss

Just because your teenager doesn't seem to be listening to you doesn't mean they're ignoring you. They might not be able to hear you.

More teenagers have hearing loss these days and you can probably blame it on the way they listen to music.

A new national study found that a remarkable one in five children, aged 12 to 19, had hearing problems. And although experts can't pinpoint the exact cause, teenagers more often than not have lost their hearing in the high frequency range. This type of hearing loss comes from exposure to noises like those made by an iPod or other personal music device. Teenagers tend to listen to music this way at a high volume and over time, that music can hurt their hearing.

In this case, high frequency hearing loss means the teenager won't be able to hear all words clearly and that can interfere with learning and even casual conversations. The best way to help keep your child's hearing intact is a lot easier said than done. On most iPods and other music devices you can set a volume limit. Although this might not work for older kids, you can talk with them about how permanent hearing damage is. A good rule of thumb for them is to keep the volume low enough so someone standing next to them can't hear anything coming from the music player.