Listen To Your Buds Educates About Preventing Hearing Loss

With so many kids using personal audio technology all day long listening to music, playing games, and talking on the phone, the length of time and volume levels may pose a threat to future hearing. With the increased popularity of personal listening devices (MP3 players), the risk of developing noise induced hearing loss is greater than ever. The prevalence of hearing loss in the United States will rise significantly due to the growing use of personal audio technology, among other factors. More than half of high school students in the U.S. currently report having at least one symptom of hearing loss according to a 2006 poll commissioned by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA).

The technology itself is not the problem but parents should help kids develop habits that will prevent hearing loss.

The ASHA, together with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Parents’ Choice Foundation, offer a new educational campaign directed at kids of elementary school age to educate kids, their parents and teachers, and society as a whole on hearing loss prevention. Called Listen To Your Buds, the campaign has tips for kids, parents, and educators.

The kids portion of the site has footage of a Justin Roberts concert that was held for the Listen to Your Buds campaign and animated music video games called Turn Down the Volume and Bump ’n Hustle which are aimed to educate children about appropriate listening levels.

The parent and educator portion of the Listen To Your Buds site is full of resources. Parents can read about how to protect their children’s ears, warning signs for hearing loss, see an animation of how the ear works, and the correlation between MP3 players and hearing loss. Teachers can learn how to prevent hearing loss in the classroom and ways to support children with hearing loss.

It isn’t too late to curtail further hearing loss entirely in younger kids who are just starting to use portable music players and similar devices. It’s critical that children learn good listening habits, and that parents set guidelines for headphone usage, monitor noise levels and watch for warning signs of hearing loss.

As part of the Listen To Your Buds campaign, ASHA and the Parents’ Choice Foundation have developed a national coalition of children’s music recording artists, each of whom act as advocates and spokespeople.

As part of the effort, ASHA presents Billy Jonas, a Parents’ Choice Award winning artist at the Lisner Auditorium in Washington DC on Wednesday, April 29 at 10:30 am.

ASHA and Listen To Your Buds have graciously reserved 24 tickets for DC Metro Tech Savvy Mama readers to attend the Billy Jonas concert at Lisner on April 29. These tickets cannot be purchased anywhere and tickets will be given away on a first come first served basis to local readers who leave a comment telling me how many tickets they would like. Be sure to include your e-mail address!

Fine print: Your comment must contain an email address so I can reach you. I will update this post when all tickets have been taken.

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Original post by Tech Savvy Mama
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