LONG AND LOUD: Being hooked to the iPod or cellphone is damaging

Jayojit Basu, 20, blasts music into his ears “whenever I need to relax or am feeling bored”. That, on an average, meant being hooked to his iPod or cellphone five hours a day. Till Thursday morning, that is, when the student of St Xavier’s College read in The Telegraph about the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association linking the use of portable music players to hearing loss among the young.

“I will try and cut down listening to the iPod, maybe to two or two-and-a-half hours a day,” said Jayojit.

What the Australian study of kids with “mild to moderate” hearing loss has found or what city doctors are shouting out is not music to the ears of GenX — that listening to loud music on the iPod/cell and engaging in long phone conversations are damaging.

“In the past couple of years with the increased penetration of these gadgets, there has been a 65 to 70 per cent rise in the incidence of hearing problems in the age group of 15 to 24. At the SSKM outdoor, we get eight to 10 students with hearing problems every day,” said Arunava Sengupta, an associate professor of ENT.

Most patients in that age bracket were found to be listening to music on earplugs for “eight to 10 hours” a day causing continuous “bombardment of sound” on the ear drums. “When many of these children fall asleep, the music is still blaring away in their ears. Continuous vibration that penetrates to the inner ear leads to acoustic trauma or deafness,” Sengupta said.

The problem can be either neural (to do with nerves) or conductive (due to disease or wax accumulation). Doctors warn that neural defects are irreversible.

That’s what Kanika Tiwari, 22, could have been headed for if she hadn’t tuned off in time. “I had been watching movies online for a month with the PC speakers, besides my daily dose of iPod songs, when I detected a shrill sound in my right ear. An ENT told me to cut down on my music-movie time, pop some pills and use ear drops. I just switched off my favourite tech tools for a week and my ear now feels fine,” said Kanika.

Others like Soham Basu, 17, refuse to give up on their ipod time just yet. “I listen to music on an ipod and the volume is always high. I try to keep it down to two-and-a-half hours, but not less than that,” said the Class XII student of Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan.

Many schools have tried counselling kids — Apeejay, even got in technicians from Philips — to cut down on the excess use of ear tormentors, but to little avail.

Sengupta of SSKM insists that “awareness building” is the only way forward. “When I tell kids exactly how their hearing has been affected, they get scared and take steps.”

Abhijit Bhattacharya, a Class XI student and a budding piano player, has to listen to a lot of music but no longer at the expense of his hearing. “I have cut down on listening to ipod and switched to speakers for the most part,” he said.