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New study finds nearly half of young people are putting their hearing at risk

We're living in a very loud world.

Sascha Kohlmann

Headphones can protect you from the annoying noises of the world, but they come with their own risks.

There was a time not too long ago when teens blasting music too loudly was everyone’s problem. Parental cries of “Turn down that damned music!” seemed to punctuate every day. But with the advent of tiny, high-performance headphones, the volume battles have become personal and much more challenging to monitor. Now, as more people are plugging into music anywhere and everywhere with what experts call personal listening devices (PLDs), alarms are being raised about a new trend: unsafe listening practices that could lead to widespread hearing loss in young people.

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A recent global study conducted by researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina and colleagues worldwide examined the listening habits of people aged 12 to 34, focusing on exposure to loud sounds from earbuds and headphones as well as at entertainment venues like econcerts, clubs, and festivals. The findings reveal that unsafe listening habits aren’t isolated; they’re a global issue affecting millions of young ears worldwide.

Loud music, quiet consequences

The study collected data from over 19,000 individuals across 33 studies and found that roughly 24% of young people are likely using their PLDs at unsafe volumes. When it comes to loud entertainment venues, that number rises significantly, with around 48% of attendees exposed to potentially harmful sound levels.

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Key Findings:

  • Personal Listening Devices: 23.81% of young listeners engage in unsafe listening practices via headphones and earbuds.
  • Entertainment Venues: 48.20% of young people attending concerts or clubs are exposed to volumes that can damage hearing over time.

The World Health Organization’s guidelines indicate that listening above 85 decibels for long periods can cause irreversible hearing damage, and many concerts and clubs easily exceed this threshold. With more young people tuning in to louder sounds, often for extended periods, the cumulative impact could be life-altering.

"Unsafe listening practices are highly prevalent worldwide and may place over 1 billion young people at risk of hearing loss."

— Lauren K. Dillard, lead researcher

A hidden health crisis affecting over a billion people

The most striking takeaway from this study is the sheer number of young people at risk. The researchers estimate that between 670 million and 1.35 billion adolescents and young adults worldwide could be on a path toward hearing loss due to unsafe listening practices. This staggering number makes hearing damage a serious, though often overlooked, global health issue.

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Hearing loss often progresses gradually, with early symptoms easy to miss. Many don’t realize they have hearing issues until the damage has already affected their quality of life, including their ability to understand speech in noisy settings or fully enjoy music at safer volumes. Dr. Lauren Dillard, the lead researcher, highlighted the urgent need for action, emphasizing that unchecked, this issue could affect a generation.

Tech steps in: New solutions to address unsafe listening

A pair of Apple AirPods.New features might turn the source of this problem into one of its solutions. aconcagua

Recognizing the growing concern around hearing damage, some tech companies are stepping up with innovative solutions to help protect users. Apple, for instance, has recently introduced new hearing health features in its AirPods and iPhones that focus on reducing noise exposure and enabling easy hearing checkups.

  • Hearing Test in iOS Health App: Apple now offers an in-app hearing test available on the iPhone, allowing users to assess their hearing from their device, with results saved in the Health app. Users can even upload professional hearing test results for comparison. Designed to prevent gaming, the test uses randomized tones for accuracy, helping users better understand their hearing health over time.
  • Hearing Protection with AirPods Pro 2: With the recent iOS 18.1 update, AirPods Pro 2 offers hearing protection across all listening modes, including Noise Cancellation, Transparency, and Adaptive Audio. These settings help reduce exposure to overly loud sounds, adding a layer of defense for users in noisy environments. However, extreme sounds like fireworks or gunfire are still beyond its intended scope.

As Apple introduces these features, other manufacturers are likely to follow suit, with industry experts suggesting that hearing protection technology will soon become a common offering across high-end audio devices. These developments are a promising step, as technology starts to play a more active role in helping individuals protect their hearing.

Protecting your ears in a loud world

With sound technology getting smaller, sleeker, and more powerful, it’s easy to slip into unsafe listening habits. But a few small changes can go a long way toward protecting your hearing. Taking regular breaks, lowering the volume slightly, and considering noise-canceling headphones are all small steps with significant benefits.

This study’s findings are a wake-up call. Hearing loss is often preventable, but once it sets in, it’s challenging to reverse. By spreading awareness, encouraging policy changes, and practicing safe listening, we can help protect our ears and preserve the music we love—at safer volumes—for years to come.

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Innovation

Even facial recognition software is racially biased. But that may be about to change.

Across the country, millions of people are in an uproar about racism in policing and law enforcement as a whole - however one of the more sinister and overlooked aspects of racism in policing is found in the very place where human bias is supposed to be notably absent.

Facial recognition, the technology used for surveillance in many communities nationwide, has now become a major point of discussion for many who are deeply concerned that the inherent bias of its algorithm is not racially impartial.

Used for observation, tracking, and in many cases prosecution - facial recognition has been in use by many agencies for well over 20 years. There's just one glaring error - it is mostly accurate when it is profiling white men.

Studies by M.I.T. and NIST have found that because of a lack of diversity in the databases the technology uses as a baseline, the systems are flawed from the start. Having a broken database to work from, the rates of misidentification are in danger of destroying countless lives due to a computing bias that doesn't have a large enough reference pool from which to analyze data.

This month, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM announced they would stop or pause their facial recognition offerings for law enforcement. However, many of the technology companies that law enforcement utilize aren't as recognizable as Amazon. Some of them are lesser known outfits like Clearview AI, Cognitec, NEC, and Vigilant Solutions.


Photo by Lianhao Qu on


The fact that the protests have reignited the conversation regarding facial recognition is an interesting development, as protests themselves are a main source of data-gathering for the systems themselves. Protests, along with general collection points (social media, phone unlocking, security camera capture, image scraping).

Joy Buolamwini, a Ghanaian-American computer scientist and digital activist based at the MIT Media Lab, founded the Algorithmic Justice League to "create a world with more ethical and inclusive technology". Her work over the past few years has helped to bring attention to the issue of the racial bias in the system.

Speaking to The Guardian, Buolamwini explains, "When I was a computer science undergraduate I was working on social robotics – the robots use computer vision to detect the humans they socialize with. I discovered I had a hard time being detected by the robot compared to lighter-skinned people. At the time I thought this was a one-off thing and that people would fix this. Later I was in Hong Kong for an entrepreneur event where I tried out another social robot and ran into similar problems. I asked about the code that they used and it turned out we'd used the same open-source code for face detection – this is where I started to get a sense that unconscious bias might feed into the technology that we create. But again I assumed people would fix this. So I was very surprised to come to the Media Lab about half a decade later as a graduate student, and run into the same problem. I found wearing a white mask worked better than using my actual face.

Buolamwini continues, "This is when I thought, you've known about this for some time, maybe it's time to speak up … Within the facial recognition community you have benchmark data sets which are meant to show the performance of various algorithms so you can compare them. There is an assumption that if you do well on the benchmarks then you're doing well overall. But we haven't questioned the representativeness of the benchmarks, so if we do well on that benchmark we give ourselves a false notion of progress."

Many have raised this concern in the past, however it has taken a wave of demonstrations nationally to bring the issue back into conversation for tech companies reexamining their relationships with how they build and distribute products - especially as it relates to law enforcement.

Another early whistleblower concerning racial bias in AI was Calypso AI, a software company that "builds software products that solve complex AI risks for national security and highly-regulated industries".

Speaking with Davey Gibian, Chief Business Officer at Calypso AI, he revealed that Calypso had already been working on a comprehensive anti-bias tool for their systems over the past few months that is launching imminently.

Describing the overall issues related to facial recognition bias, Gibian explains, "There are two primary issues when it comes to racial profiling and police specific bias, one is data collection and data availability. The data available is based on things that have already happened - so police are looking for criminals by looking at data of who has already been booked. However, because police primarily target minority communities, that creates an inherent data bias model that predicts minorities will commit the most crime. The second primary issue is that even if you are aware of bias - simply stripping out race alone doesn't help. You actually have to address the other elements related to the race data. For example, the geo-coordinates, the context of the capture, mugshots, the neighborhoods where people live, and other indicators from open source data, like spending habits, articles of clothing associated with minority and marginalized communities. All of these factors contribute to bias models, which leads police to use preexisting bias to designate criminals. So, because these are feedback loops in AI - it's going to over-index racial bias."

Put simply, he says, "Existing police data is biased because police are biased - models trained on that bias will be biased. Bias begets bias."

When planning their approach to combat this deeply rooted issue in the system, Calypso decided to go for transparency instead of the murky steps many other outfits have opted for.

Speaking matter-of-factly, Gibian continues, "There aren't enough tools to ensure that correlated indicators of race are stripped out of models. Our entire mission is to accelerate trusted AI into societal benefit - basically, we want to use AI for good. A massive barrier is the ethical and non-technical impact of AI and bias is one of the largest concerns we have. Because of this we've baked in an automated bias-detection tool into our software to ensure that any organization deploying a model can check for inherent bias, and can know not only if the data is biased, but how to mitigate against that. We believe that these bias scores should be shared with the public anytime AI is used in a public sector."

As the Black Lives Matter protests continue and the movement moves from the streets to policy change, what remains to be seen is whether the large corporations that are publicly pledging support will follow the example of smaller companies like Calypso AI, Arthur AI, Fiddler, Modzy and others who are looking into bias in AI systems - and whether they will implement permanent solutions that make facial recognition a truly impartial, unbiased tool for the future.

It is worth noting that the Department of Defense recently released new guidance that explicitly requires that any AI used must not be biased.

Despite these positive movements towards a better technology overall, Gibian warns, "There's a huge amount of benefit that AI can bring to make a more equitable society - but there are also pitfalls as a result of the original human bias. If we don't avoid that - AI could accelerate a less equitable and more disenfranchised future."

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Planet

Scientists discovered a mushroom that eats plastic, and believe it could clean our landfills.

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Fungi Mutarium mushroom eats plasticwww.youtube.com


Plastic waste is one of the biggest environmental issues of our time. And while a straw ban is not the way we're going to solve it — here's why – people everywhere are looking for ways to reduce plastic use and mitigate the effects of waste.

From handing out plastic bags with embarrassing labels to removing the plastic from six-packs to harnessing the power of a plastic-eating mutant (bacteria), more and more of us are working to find solutions to a growing global program.

Add one more strange and awesome plastic-killing discover to the list: A rare mushroom that feasts on plastic the same way you or I would when we go to that $5 buffet at Cici's. (I have been only once and I'm still thinking about it, even though just the thoughts are bad for my blood pressure.)

According to reports, the mushroom's plastic-devouring properties were first discovered in 2011, when a team of Yale undergraduates and their professor traveled to Ecuador for a research trip. They found the mushroom — Pestalotiopsis microspora — in the amazon and were astounded to find that the fungus not only subsists on polyurethane (it's the first plant to sustain itself only on plastic), but could do so without oxygen.

That means it could be planted at the bottom of landfills and happily eat its fill of plastic for eons to come! (Just like us at Cici's pizza!)


IRAQ-SOCIETY-POVERTY AFP/Getty Images


Despite our best efforts at increasing conservation and reducing waste, the U.S. continues to produce more plastic waste each year, while other recent studies suggest that recycling of plastic waste is actually declining.

The amount of plastic waste that we're producing is estimated to rise 3.8% each year, with an estimated 40 million tons of plastic waste expected to be generated in 2019 alone by American companies and consumers. National Geographic says that over the past 60 years, we've created an estimated 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste. An astonishing 83.7% of that waste is expected to end up in landfills. Anything we can do to put a dent into the damage we're creating could make a world of difference for us and the planet.


NEPAL-ENVIRONMENT-RECORD AFP/Getty Images


Will these mushrooms be the end to our plastic problems? More research is needed to tell. Until then, we can all help keep landfills cleaner by avoiding single-use plastics in our lives.

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Heroes

These kids are using technology to turn their prosthetics into a superhero's dream.

If you could give yourself a superpower or a superhero-style gadget, what would it be?

I always say I'd want to be a shapeshifter or have a car that could shape-shift à la the Batmobile because I like pretending to be other things.

It's a fun question to ask friends because it gets everyone to think outside the box and have a good time being creative.

Now consider this: What if you could take those ideas and actually make them functional? (Who else's inner comic nerd just perked up?)

That's the idea behind Superhero Boost — a weeklong workshop where disabled kids get to create their own superpowers in the form of wearable devices.

One kid's light-up prosthetic. All photos by Autodesk/Blue Bergen, except where noted, used with permission.

The workshop was launched in 2014 by Kate Ganim and has since turned into an intensive series of workshops that help kids harness their inner designer and/or engineer.

"We aim to create a space for kids to celebrate the bodies that they're in and to re-think their disability as a super-ability," writes Ganim in an email.

However, she stresses that it's not about trying to "fix" these kids. Many of them were born without a limb or part of a limb; because those were never there in the first place, the kids don't feel like they're missing anything. Instead, it's about helping them create something cool and unique that they're proud to show off.

"Why does it have to be a hand, when it could be literally anything and it could do things that a natural hand isn't able to do?" asks Ganim.

What's more, the kids get to make their body modification using state-of-the-art technology like 3D modeling, robotics, and Google artificial intelligence technology — with the help of trained experts, of course.

Since 15-year-old Sydney's a competitive BMX rider, she updated her arm prosthetic so that it lights up to intimidate competitors.

Photo courtesy of Andrea Howard.

This was her second year doing the workshop, and since she's now quite proficient in 3D printing, she was asked to be a mentor as well as an inventor during the June Superhero Boost workshop in San Francisco.

"The thing that I like as a parent is that they want kids to think on their own and be themselves," says Audrey, Sydney's mom.

Sydney's currently ranked seventh in her state in her age group for BMX, and her handle bar was custom made to support her prosthetic, so she wanted to make it stand out in a major way. When she learned Google engineers were going to be at the workshop teaching kids how to incorporate AI, she knew that had to be part of her design.

Thanks to help from Google engineers and staff from both Superhero Boost and Autodesk, the company that held the workshop and offered up their plethora of tech tools, she got her modification to work by the end of the week.

"The [engineers] are like little kids," remarks Sydney. "It's quite fun. They get so excited."

Meanwhile, 16-year-old Kenzie created something entirely different — a robotic arm sleeve with a glowing gem that even Iron Man would envy.

Kenzie actually came up with the idea at a one-day workshop she did with Superhero Boost in Boston, near her hometown, but she really got to flesh it out during the most recent weeklong workshop in San Francisco.

While in the end, it wasn't totally what she'd envisioned, it still looked pretty darn cool.

"I was like, 'It's going to have to shoot something or do something,'" says Kenzie. "It ended up just lighting up. It did a thing — not a fantastic thing — but it did something."

She devised the whole modification on the computer in something called Tinkercad, a computer-aided design (CAD) program that allows you to 3D print your creations. Kenzie had to do some futzing with the voice control aspect of the project, which initially failed to function correctly, but eventually she and her engineer helper figured it out.

This experience is about much more than making awesome gadgets, though: It's also helping these kids see that they really can do anything they set their minds to with technology at their disposal.

Kenzie and Sydney working at the Superhero Boost workshop.

For example, Kenzie was blown away by a wheelchair booster that her friend Anaiss made — it literally lifts her wheelchair higher, which is not only super cool, but also legitimately useful.

These kids are also taking skills with them that will likely be instrumental in whatever career they end up choosing.

Kenzie, for one, is looking to go into toy design, and thanks to the workshop, she's already connecting the dots to that dream. "One lady at the end was talking about how she's going to be working on this augmented reality project, and that she wanted to work with me on that," she says.

What's more, everyone who participated gets to keep working with a professional designer on their prototypes to make them as cool as they can be.

But while all these tools are great, the real superpowers come from the kids themselves.

The kids from the most recent Superhero Boost workshop.

"By nature, these kids are incredibly creative and determined," writes Gamin. "They're having to adapt every day to an environment that was not designed for them, and it's on them to figure out how to adapt."

However, since the most formidable beings are the most adaptable, there's no doubt these kids are going to be unstoppable.

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