Too long and too loud – an international study reveals how intensively people listen to music on MP3 players and cell phones

2010-11-25, Stäfa, Switzerland

91 percent of German teenagers listen to music on MP3 players and cell phones, and eleven percent of these do so for more than three hours a day. A further eleven percent listen to their music cranked up to the highest possible volume. These are just some of the results from an international study conducted by Hear the World, which offers striking evidence of how intensively young people in particular – but many adults as well – listen to music through earphones. The majority of the people surveyed are aware of the potential negative implications of this on their hearing. Just how serious the consequences can be, especially for young people, is demonstrated in research carried out by the health insurance company DAK, which shows that the number of children and young people covered by insurance who have been prescribed a hearing instrument since 2005 has risen by 38 percent.

As part of an international study, Hear the World, a global initiative set up by the leading hearing instrument manufacturer Phonak, surveyed over 4,400 people aged between 14 and 65 in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA, asking them about their listening habits. An overview of some of the results is given below:

• Ten percent of the Germans surveyed listen to music on MP3 players and cell phones on a daily basis. The world leader in this respect is the USA, with 18 percent, followed by the UK with 16 percent.
• Amongst the German teenager category, 36 percent listen to music on MP3 players and cell phones every day. The front-runners here are the young people of Italy, 52 percent of whom enjoy listening to music in this way, followed by those in Switzerland with 46 percent.
• More than 80 percent of the Germans surveyed listen to music at over 50 percent of the maximum possible volume, with six percent of these listening at full volume. Amongst German teenagers in particular, eleven percent crank up the volume on their MP3 players and cell phones as far as it will go.
• The average daily time spent using MP3 players or cell phones to listen to music amounts to more than an hour for over half of the Germans surveyed, rising to more than three hours for eleven percent of the German teenagers.