Study finds hearing loss on the rise in teens. A lot of parents
may say their teens don't listen to them, but a new study finds
teenagers really aren't hearing as well as they used to. Dr.
Josef Shargorodsky of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston led a
new study that compares hearing loss of teens in 2005 and teens
from the early 1990s. He found a significant increase, about
30-percent, in the prevalence of hearing loss among teenagers
between the study periods. The study did not explore possible
reasons for the increase, but some experts have an educated
guess. "We've moved into an era where the culture is such that
everybody has some kind of private or independent listening
device," says Dr. Tommie Robinson of the American Speech-
Language Hearing Association. Ear buds abound in today's teen
culture. They're standard equipment for mp3 players, cell phones
and video games. Speech specialists say the best thing you can
do to protect your hearing is turn the volume down. "If you're
standing next to someone and