How many times have you told someone or been told that the tunes blaring in your MP3 player of choice are just too darn loud and that “you’re going to hurt your hearing”?

Well, it turns out the scolders were right. EU scientists have learned, according to multiple international news agencies including the Australian BC, that as many as 10% of portable music fans may suffer permanent hearing loss from rocking too hard to tracks that are just too loud. According to the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks, those most at risk for this long-term damage from “leisure noise” (as opposed to occupational noise) are–you guessed it–young people.

So we aren’t talking 20 years of pumping Metallica or Green Day out of your precious little listening devices……as little as an hour a day for five years can result in the kind of damage reported in this study. How long does the average teenager or college student you know spend with earbuds in his or her ear? Walked across a college campus lately? There isn’t an unplugged ear to be seen!

And how long as the iPod been all the rage with…well EVERYBODY? Seven years. First generation iPod users beware: that’s plenty of time to fry one’s auditory sense for good. And forget about the Walkman. If you’ve been rocking out to that device since it came out, cross your fingers you’ve been on the lower half of the volume dial.

That’s really the point here. No MP3 or other audio device is bad. Just jamming your eardrums full of high decible sound waves is.

The solution? Young people around the world need some sound education about sound. Without it, we’ll have a generation of hearing-damaged persons in just a few years. We must tell the youth of the world to turn down the volume or even (gasp) try activities without a soundtrack blazing into their heads. It may just save their ears.

Summer Johnson, PhD