Personal Music Players and Hearing Loss: The HUNT Cohort Study.
Bo Engdahl, Lisa Aarhus
PMID 34181492WHAT IT FOUND
In adults followed for 21 years, personal music player use and weekly hours showed no association with hearing threshold.
High preferred volume was associated with 1.4 dB worse hearing at 3 to 6 kHz.
Key findings
01In the follow-up sample, personal music player use and weekly duration were not associated with hearing threshold (F(3, 11812) = 0.98, p = .40).
02High preferred sound volume was associated with worse hearing thresholds than never/rarely use (1.4 dB in the follow-up analysis).
03In the full HUNT4 cross-sectional sample, high-volume use was associated with worse thresholds only among adults aged 40 years or older.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The exposure was self-reported, so people may have remembered their listening differently depending on their hearing status. The study did not measure how many years a person had used personal music players. Because it was observational, reverse causation cannot be excluded; people with hearing loss may listen louder. The volume categories were broad, and participants may have interpreted high volume differently. Only pure-tone thresholds at conventional frequencies were measured, so tinnitus, hyperacusis, and hearing in background noise were not assessed. The participation rates were 63% in 1998 and 43% in 2018, so some people who did not attend are not represented. The final samples excluded people with missing questionnaires or nonvalid audiometry.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of the article.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that personal music players cause hearing loss. The follow-up analysis found no association between use or weekly hours and hearing threshold, and the high-volume association was observational, so people with worse hearing may have chosen louder volume.