iPoditis' Ride

I stumbled and ran into someone when the crowded bus started again. I struggled to stand. I’ve just collided with a guy in his thirties, wearing old-fashioned sports clothes. He sneaked a look at me over his shoulder with unemotional eyes just for a second. As long as I was pulling my “sorry” out of my mouth he turned his automatic head back to nail his empty gaze beyond the window. He couldn’t hear me because I could hear the music shouting out of his headphones.

I found a seat next to a young attractive woman in her mid-twenties who was also using headphones. Her sensual and pouted red lips were suggesting me to have a chat with her, you never know where your life is going to drastically change, but it was impossible. Another gaze lost in the abyss said to me like the song: “no, no, no…”

I let myself slide on the seat and took it easy. One, two, three, four…I began counting until I got bored. I was looking at how so many people were plugged to their headphones. The bus was in silence, only a shy musical murmur moaned in the background.

It was a quarter to six p.m. and people went back home from work. They reminded me of Marx’s theory of alienation. You live just to work, all day long, all life long. When you get tired you can go home. They reminded me that the more people you live with the less you get to know. They also reminded me of the image that I once lived in London’s Underground from London Bridge to Greenwich. Nobody talks to nobody. And I became homesick of my little town where women gossip louder than the radio on the bus.

I also decided to throw away my spirit through the window and follow it with my eyes. Just to relax, keep me occupied and forget my homesickness.

The bus ran George St. As usual, it was busy, busy. People sneaking other people, people begging, people shopping and people, people, and more people listening to their headphones. I was going nuts. Even two guys were speaking to each other, (¿?) or moving their mouths looking to each other, without switching themselves off from their headsets, displaying a fatuous exchange. “What’s happening?”, I thought.

“What does it mean this headphone fever to our daily relationships?”

Robert Morrison Crane, an American scholar, wrote a thesis about the relationship between headphones used with portable audio technology, loneliness and social distance. Similar as I was feeling in the bus, Crane assumed that the use of headphones may prevent interaction and feelings of being connected to others. “Several theorists believe headphone use tends to alienate those around the user who are often put off from conversation”, says Crane.

It seems that people, including daily headphone users, think that sometimes feelings don’t need to be scholarly researched. “I think the use of headphones deteriorate daily life relationships, due to this “I don’t give a shit, I only care about myself and my music” attitude”, says Juan, student. He also points out that “headphones are a good “weapon” to escape from reality since you create a barrier between you and the rest of the world”. “Headphones can make you a little anti-social”, admits Alexandra, part-time worker. She believes that “if you don’t take your headphones off to interact with anyone, then you’re isolating yourself in a potentially dangerous way”. “You are completely cut off from the rest of the people around you”, states Ana, student. Álvaro, professional, considers that “earphones are a modern symbol of isolation”, he thinks that “human relations are more and more uncommon as time goes by” and from his personal experience he would say that “there is a link between the use of earphones and happiness”.

Crane went further in his thesis, because “this portable audio device serve to eliminate any fear, anxiety or discomfort a person might experience”. Headphones would be the perfect helmets to feel secure when riding a “society”. The use of these portable audio devices may separate individuals from others in life situations and this may result in feelings of isolation, such as social distance and loneliness. The conclusion of his thesis showed how social loneliness was found to be “significantly higher in the high users” of headphones compared to “low users”.

Although people recognise the potential damage to social interaction that the use of headphones could involve, eventually, they use them. And they play them a lot. Alexandra tends to use them when she’s travelling, “particularly on the train or bus”. It always brings her “great joy to listen to the music” that she likes. “It allows me some personal space on crowded public transport, and a sense of privacy”. Alexandra and Ana, both find headsets useful to focus on studying or just to think about themselves. Ana loves them. “I use headphones every day. While I’m studying, running, walking on the street and also in the bus or the train”, says Ana. “The music is very important to me and that’s the way to listen to it wherever and whenever”.

Juan, confessed “music lover”, prefers to listen to the music “coming out from loudspeakers”, however he uses them to study and recognise its “enormous versatility”. Alvaro, to confirm his own theory of the modern symbol of isolation, uses them when he feels “down, just to escape”. Teall, a media digital manager, also has its own theory. She thinks that “everyone turning out on iPods will affect art as long as people are no longer making art because they’re not interacting with their environments”.

The bus stopped. Those sensual red marshmallow lips ran away from me, maybe, forever. I took the window seat and looked outside. We were just in front of the magnificent and stylish Apple Store on George St.

By that time I had already realised that almost all of the headphones people were using in the bus were iPod earbuds. Each person on that bus makes part of the 173 millions iPod users in the world (February 2009 data). “Quality” and “design” are perceived to be its competitive advantages by interviewed users of headphones for this article, who, by the way, all use either iPod or iPhone. Is it a sheer chance that they all use iPod?

The success of iPod is indisputable. It is the absolute leader of the market: more than 7 out of 10 MP3 players sold are iPod. Nonetheless its sales have declined, dropping 8%, which accounts for devastating 10.2 millions sales in the last semester. Apple, far away from giving up, is trying to resuscitate the iPod market with its new model that adds radio and video camera.

The drop in sales of iPod is due to the recession but also the cannibalisation of its “big brother” iPhone. The phone sales grew a massive 625% from the same period one year ago, boosted by the new model. Nevertheless, to your ears, either iPod or iPhone use the same kind of headphones, what, after all, means an unstoppable “Ipoditis”.

The Californian company, Apple, is living in a world without recession, scoring one record after another. The tech giant has posted a quarterly net profit of $US 1.67 billion. The chief executive, Steve Jobs, predicted still greater results for the next year in the presentation of the new iPod model. “We’ve got a very strong line-up for the holiday season and some great new products in the pipeline for 2010”.

Looking back to these figures there is no doubt that the “headphone fever” hasn’t reached its peak yet. Doctors, especially audiologists, are already alarming of its invisible consequences, but it seems that they’re doing it with some broken down megaphones that nobody can hear.

The bus started again running down Sydney’s George St. I thought the bus driver had turned on the radio but I looked to my left and noticed where all that music came from. A young teenager sat next to me. His long dark curly hair impeded me from seeing his headphones, but sometimes your ear knows more than your eyes, unless you’re wearing headphones, of course.

I don’t know how many decibels his ears were withstanding at that time, but I can say too much. Hopefully for me, he was playing a smooth and sharp heavy metal that I enjoyed a bit despite the bad quality. Alexandra wouldn’t have thought the same. She finds this sort of behaviour “annoying, not to mention rude! Especially when you can hear heavy metal blaring out of someone’s headphones”. Juan feels “sorry about their hearing health” while Ana thinks that “they hurt themselves more than they disturb other people”.

Four years ago, thanks to the work of Dean Gartecski and his team at Northwestern University, USA, it was scientifically proved that MP3 players’ headphones could be potentially dangerous for your hearing.

Since its birth, iPod has revolutionized the way we listen to music. Batteries last much longer than Walkman or Cd players and the volume can be cranked up to 120db. Besides this, the use of earbud type headphones, preferred by music listeners, such as the white ones of iPod that you insert into your ear, “are even more likely to cause hearing loss than the muff-type earphones that were associated with older devices”, says Garstecki. “Insert headphones can boost the signal by as much as six to nine decibels”. This means the same difference that exists “between the sound of a vacuum cleaner and a motorcycle” explains Garstecki. The American professor gives us another option; the use of noise-cancelling headphones. “Unlike earbuds, noise-canceling headphones quiet or eliminate background noise. This means listeners don’t feel the need to crank up the volume so high as to damage their hearing”, says Garstecki. He points at a basic rule for a safe use of headphones: no more than 60 minutes over 60 percent of the volume a day. Maybe the use of common sense would also be helpful.

But this need of cranking up the volume is inside human nature. One of hearing´s main characteristics is its adaptability. Have you ever noticed when by the seaside that you ended up not hearing the waves? That’s the adaptability. Ray Hull, professor of the Wichita State University, USA, explains it: “A person can be listening at 60 percent volume, but then as the auditory system adapts to the intensity of the sound, the perception of the intensity is that it is becoming less, so the response is to continue to turn the volume up”. The perfect example for this situation is the use of headphones in busy city hubs, where the noise is around 90 decibels (loud is defined as above 80dB), and people crank the volume up to unhealthy levels.

Sadly, the problem is that you can’t realise that you’re losing your hearing until you have lost it. It is like frogs and boiling water. If a frog drops in boiling water, it will immediately try to jump out of it. However, if we put the same frog in tepid water and we progressively heat it up, the frog will boil alive.

Today’s teens are likely “frogs” for tomorrow‘s hearing loss. Researchers at Colorado University and Children’s Hospital in Boston, USA, led by Cory Portnuff, showed that teens not only tend to play music louder than adults, but they are often unaware of how loud they are playing it. “I honestly don’t believe that most people understand they are putting themselves at risk or at what level of risk”, says Portnuff.

Statistics confirm both the existing and the coming issues. “One in six people in Australia has a hearing loss, and with the ageing of the Australian population, hearing loss is projected to increase to one in every four Australians by 2050”, reports the Australian Hearing association.

The scientific explanation of hearing loss says that loud music and noise causes hearing loss by damaging hair nerve cells in the cochlea, a part of the inner ear that helps transmit sound impulses to the brain. Exposing them to extremely or moderate loud noise on a daily basis can cause permanent damage.

Brian Fligor, director of diagnostic audiology at Children’s Hospital Boston, USA, explains the risk: “If you’re using earbuds, and you turn the volume up to about 90% of maximum and you listen a total of two hours a day, five days a week, our best estimates are that the people who have more sensitive ears will develop a rather significant degree of hearing loss”. You won’t realise it, “this would happen only after about 10 years or so or even more of listening to a personal audio device” points out Dr. Fligor. Besides, “the amount of hearing loss might differ by as much as 30db between people who had the toughest ears and those who have the tender ones, a huge variation”. Unfortunately, audiology is not able yet to recognise who have the tougher and who have the tender ears.

Some cases, like one man in Louisana, USA, who sued Apple over the design of the iPod related hearing loss, may foretell what could happen in the next years. Europe is already aware of that, and prove of this is that they have set 100 dB as the maximum output of personal audio equipment. Last month, the EU’s Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said experts and industry will together draft tougher standards to limit hearing loss. “Action is necessary because there is cause for concern over health risks especially to younger people” Kuneva said. An EU scientific advisory body says that between 2.5 and 10 million Europeans could suffer hearing loss from listening to MP3 players at unsafe volumes, over 89 dB, for more than an hour daily for at least five years.

This would mean a large social cost to the society. Today, accordingly to Australian Hearing, hearing loss costs Australia $12 billion a year with almost 160.000 people not working because they can’t hear well enough. Obviously, iPod and headphones are not exclusively responsible for this problem.

Absorbed in my thoughts and iPoditis hallucinations, I realised that I had to get off the bus. Why was I so freaked out by the use of headphones?

I got home, opened the door and the answer was in front of me: my housemate, Taishi. I have not been able to have a good conversation with him even though we have shared the same house for two months. Yes, he was using his iPod, of course, with headphones on non-stop making communication impossible.

Some days later I forced him to pull them out and took advantage to ask him “why are you always using the headphones?” and he replied full of joy:

“I love music, man”.