February 13, 2019
The World Health Organization (WHO) warns of the dangers of excessive use of headphones and headphones on smartphones: young people are exposed to too high volumes of sound and risk significant hearing loss.
“Prolonged and excessive” exposure of young people to loud finger-pointing sounds
Smartphones and us, it’s a real love story … Mainly young people, who sometimes spend part of the day with headphones screwed on to listen to music or watch videos. This practice worries the World Health Organization (WHO), which sounded the alarm in a press release published on February 12.
“ Almost 50% of people aged 12 to 35, or 1.1 billion young people, are at risk of hearing loss due to prolonged and excessive exposure to too loud sounds, including music played through personal audio devices ”, That is, smartphones or MP3 players. Here is the alarming conclusion of the WHO.
A new standard for the manufacture and use of personal audio devices
In order to protect hearing and make it easier for young people to listen, WHO has partnered with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to publish a new international standard for the manufacture and use of personal audio devices. Young people ” must understand that if they lose their hearing, it will not come back. This new WHO-ITU standard will help preserve these young consumers much better while they enjoy something they love very much.. »Explains Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO.
WHO recalls that this is an emergency, because more than 5% of the world’s population – or 466 million people – suffer from disabling hearing loss, including 34 million children and it is estimated that by 2050 more than 900 million people, 1 in 10, will have disabling hearing loss. Still according to the WHO, adopting public health measures, in particular through this new standard, would prevent half of the cases of hearing loss.
Aurélie Giraud
Read also: The health problems that appeared with the smartphone
