Tuning out the World
Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 6:27 pm. Add a comment
With the advent of the portable music player, beginning way back with the Sony Walkmans, and now with the iPod generation, the youth of the generation tune out the world by plugging into their iPod and crank up the sound. As users, you can turn the volume up, which minimizes or eliminates background noise form the world, allowing you to immerse yourself in your musical world. As a parent, we are forever calling our daughters only to receive no answer. Upon further investigation, we find them plugged into their iPod world, oblivious to the world. Not only is this aggravating to us as parents, it can be hazaradous to your health (i.e. hearing loss) and potentially dangerous.
A pair of recent articles have been published on the topic of hearing loss Skiing in the iPod age and Long, Loud iPod Use Can Cause Hearing Loss discuss the potential and proven hazards of hearing loss associated with iPod use, respectively. As always, it comes down to common sense. If you want to eliminate all outside noise by turning your iPod Volume up to “11″ (my nod to “This is Spinal Tap” - what a classic line), there is a risk of partial hearing loss in the future. Of course, this may not be signiifcant to those who are invincible (i.e. younger than 25) or won’t live to be 30. However, hopefully a word of warning may result in moderating iPod volume for the rest.
With regard to potential dangers, Skiing in the iPod age discusses the potential dangers in the context of skiing. While it is very enjoyable to be carving turns, completely oblivious to the world as you float down the mountain listening to your skiing playlist, it also means you may not hear shouted warnings from other skiers or pending disaster associated with snowmobiles.
In another, possible real life example, an International exchange student from Kenya was studying here last summer and was out for a late afternoon walk when he was struck and killed by a helicopter B.C. helicopter crash kills four, including pedestrian. It was rumoured that the unfortunate pedestrian had his iPod and was plugged in. Obviously, listening to the iPod didn’t kill him, but I would advance the proposal that it contributed to his death in that he may having been unaware of a helicopter in distress above him until it was too late to respond.
I love listening to commercial-free music on my iPod and have many hours of diverse music loaded onto it, however, I only turn it up loud enough to hear it and cover most of the noise from the outside world, but can still hear people if they try to attract my attention from the same room. If someone calls me for dinner from another room, well, that may be a slightly different story.
