You probably often use your tablet or smartphone to stream music, TV shows, or movies. In fact, many websites these days auto-play videos regardless of whether you want them to or not.

Smartphones, tablets, and other types of portable music players are now commonplace, as are earbuds and headphones.

But if your portable music player is turned up too loud while wearing earbuds or headphones, you can damage your hearing quickly. Let’s look at why.

NIHL

This isn’t some new sports league — NIHL stands for noise-induced hearing loss, and it’s the second-largest cause of hearing loss worldwide. To understand NIHL, it helps to understand how hearing works.

Hearing basics

Hearing is complex. It’s more than just your ears taking in sound — your nerves and brain actively partner with your ear. Take a look:

Your outer ear collects sound waves, which travel down your ear canal and cause your eardrum to vibrate.
Your eardrum passes the vibrations to the three smallest bones in your body, in the middle ear, which amplify the vibrations and send them to your inner ear.
In your inner ear, the vibrations become waves in a fluid-filled cavity. The waves jostle tiny ribbon-like hearing cells, called hair cells, which convert the wave information into nerve impulses.
Your auditory (hearing) nerve sends all those nerve impulses to the sound-processing part of your brain.
Your brain does a lot of behind-the-scenes work: It pinpoints where the sound came from, focuses on it, separates out background noise, determines whether it recognizes the sound, and identifies whether it’s speech, music, etc.

As you can see, a lot happens during the process we call hearing! The delicate dance happens all day, every day, effortlessly — unless something keeps one of the above steps from happening. That “something” could be earwax buildup, damage to your eardrum, an ear infection, or damage to any of the tiny structures in your middle or inner ear.

How noise causes hearing loss

The sound waves caused by a loud noise slam against your eardrum with a lot of force. That force is passed on by your vibrating eardrum, amplified by your middle ear, and transferred to your inner ear.

This is where problems start.

Hair cells are sensitive to strong movements. In the case of a loud noise, the vibrations entering your inner ear cause forceful waves, which can overwork the hair cells. Over time, the hair cells wear out or become damaged and can’t send signals to the brain as well as they should. The result is hearing loss.

How Headphones Hurt Your Hearing

Sound pressure — the force generated by a noise — is measured in decibels (dB). A quiet sound, like a ticking watch, has a noise level of 20 dB, but a food processor has a noise level of 95 dB.

Protecting your hearing from noise damage is all about the decibels. You’re safe if the sound in question stays below 85 dB. Above that, you’re in the action zone — protect your ears or risk hearing damage.

For comparison:

A clothes dryer = 60 dB
No need for hearing protection
A gas lawn mower = 91 dB
Exposure can damage hearing in 2 hours
A tractor = 100 dB
Exposure can damage hearing in 15 minutes
A chain saw = 112 dB
Exposure can damage hearing in less than 1 minute

Don’t worry — we’re not saying, “Don’t mow your lawn.” When you do, though, make sure you wear some form of hearing protection, such as noise-canceling headphones or even simple foam earplugs from the pharmacy.

Does that mean you have to wear hearing protection while you listen to music? No, but it’s in your power to keep the volume to a safe level to preserve your hearing: Some portable music players can generate 112 dB — in other words, if you like to listen to your music at full volume, you’re likely pumping a chain saw’s worth of noise at your ears from centimeters away — damage can occur in less than a minute!

Why Protecting Your Hearing Matters

Hearing loss is connected to overall health in surprising ways. It’s been linked to depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cognitive decline, dementia, and other health concerns.

But it’s not just a concern for later in life: One study found that any degree of hearing loss early in life increases a child’s risk for language and learning problems.

Considering that one study of portable music player use in 9- to 11-year-olds reported that 9 in 10 children and teens use some form of audio-streaming device for education or recreation, portable music players pose a considerable hearing health risk at all ages.

Indeed, that same study found that 14 percent of the children had measurable hearing loss. In addition, if a child listened to their portable music player only once or twice a week, it doubled their chances of hearing loss compared to children who didn’t use one.

What You Can Do

Enforce the 60/60 rule. Don’t turn the volume up past 60 percent of full volume and turn the device off completely after listening for 60 minutes so your ears can have a break.
Use headphones instead of earbuds. With earbuds, you pick up background noise, which often leads to turning up the volume of the music to hear it better. Headphones that surround the ear keep the background noise to a minimum, allowing you to leave the volume at or below 60 percent. Even better, invest in noise-canceling headphones.
If you must use earbuds, make them in-ear earbuds. With these earbuds, the earpiece sits inside the ear canal, rather than just outside it. The sleeve around the speaker blocks out background noise and keeps your audio from escaping the ear canal.
Use the sound limiter built into the portable music player. Many devices allow you to limit how loud the volume goes, or the device has a built-in alert telling you you’re risking hearing damage by pushing the volume higher.
For kids, get volume-limiting headphones. Though there are many child-friendly options for headphones that will keep the volume from going over 85 dB, it’s best to read up on whichever pair you choose to buy. For example, Wirecutter regularly updates its list of recommended kids’ headphones for parents who are concerned about noise levels.

Are Portable Music Players Hurting Your Hearing?