This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s spring editorial intern Henry Ryeder. Find him on Instagram at @henryryeder. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
B.G. was minding his own business on a typical day in San Antonio, Texas. His parents, Carlos Gordoa and Ariana Reyes of San Antonio, were presumably in another room as their 12-year-old son watched Netflix on his phone. B.G.’s Airpods were fixed in his ears when he received an Amber Alert. Though B.G. believed he had his AirPods at a low volume, the Amber Alert blared through them, immediately causing him massive ear pain. In the years since the event, B.G. has experienced hearing loss and trauma.
According to a lawsuit filed against Apple and its China-based components manufacturer in 2022, B.G.’s (referred to by initials in the filing to protect his identity) hearing problems will most likely be lifelong. In the lawsuit, Gordoa and Reyes claim that they bought their son’s AirPods in mint condition from an Apple Sore, without any alterations. The lawsuit includes 1,500 complaints from AirPod users claiming auditory trauma from alerts, alarms, and notifications.
The Amber Alert, a two-tone anharmonic series of 853 and 960 hertz, is a child-abduction warning message included as part of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. While it’s distributed to mobile phones as part of a range of Wireless Emergency Services (that send warnings regarding weather, natural disasters, and military dangers), the audio deliverable itself is similar to alerts broadcasted on to radio and television. These federal messaging systems for weather and other emergencies have been in place since 1997; the Amber Alert itself (Amber is a reference to Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996) became fully national in 2005.
You’d almost definitely recognize the sound if you heard it, and you might chiefly associate it with the frightening Amber Alert messages distributed to regional networks of mobile phone users (is it just me or is the abductor always in a Ford Camry?) I associate it with weather alerts broadcasted on television in the late aughts and early 2010’s, interrupting my lazy summers with flash flood warnings.
Regardless of your main point of reference, there’s no doubt most people would rally around the same frustration: it’s damn loud. The signal generated tone series is designed for maximum perception. While America’s emergency alert services have factored loudness into this design, it’s obvious that they’ve taken headphone listening into little consideration. These practices were instated at a time when media consumption relied heavily on devices with speakers. Can television and home stereo speakers cause hearing loss? Yes, but it’s unlikely, given the relative sound pressure levels and listener’s average distance from the device. Therefore, the loudness of these alerts aren’t usually dangerous. But what about in-ear and on-ear listening devices?
Not O.K., Computer
There’s frightfully little accessible information about any loudness calculations that IPAWS/Amber Alert make. Chances are, those systems are so rudimentary and analog that system-specific information like that isn’t available to the public. There’s frighteningly even less information about any hardware stopgaps that Apple puts in its devices to avoid listening trauma. This isn’t too surprising given that company’s notorious secrecy surrounding its products.
There are volume limitation capacities on the iPhone, and according to the information provided on Settings and the redirected Health app, these limitations should work pretty well. It’s unclear exactly when the Headphone Safety capabilities were introduced, but it’s obvious that it’s become popular among users. This may be a direct result of the Gordoa-Reyes lawsuit’s notoriety. It could also be a sign of the popularity of over-ear and in-ear headphones catching up to the potentially damaging reality of those devices. Regardless, it’s clear that this safety feature didn’t work for B.G.
AirPod Damage
So, can AirPods damage your ears? Yes. It’s difficult to draw conclusions and make blanket assumptions about hearing loss because so much of hearing is subjective. The human ear is a remarkably complex analytical and encoding system that uses a physical process to interpret audio information, but just as much audio perception happens on a cognitive level. This is one of the reasons why auditory traumas such as tinnitus can be so difficult to treat; they’re the result of disparate systems inextricably linked to each other.
Take these foundations of human hearing and add an alarm system designed for maximum perception traveling via cell broadcast to in-ear devices. While there’s not a lot of available information on how Wireless Emergency Services communicates with manufacturers and cell providers, we can safely deduce some explanations for B.G.’s injury. AirPods are notorious for their fickle volume settings. They can vary wildly in volume in response to some pretty arbitrary factors: calibration, charging, connection, and even stereo image (to the overpaid genius who came up with the AirPods “Spatial Audio” feature, I’d like to personally defrock you of your black turtleneck.)
Many Bluetooth audio devices send clear messages when these sorts of issues arise; for AirPods, it can often be a guessing game. With that in mind, it’s possible that the volume B.G. was listening at was artificially low; rather the device could have been mimicking a low volume setting to send a message about its state. This artificial setting was overridden by a cell broadcast that took full command of the AirPods’ hardware capabilities.
Trials and Hearing
Regardless of how much government services and giant corporations actually care about our health (they don’t), our auditory systems aren’t simple machines that process sounds on a linear scale. The term “decibel” itself almost always refers to a difference in loudness, not a scale starting from 0 hz up. Wearing AirPods in and of itself is a risky behavior, even without government and corporate negligence.
Sure, the headphone safety limitations may help, but if the case of B.G.’s Amber Alert injury is any indication, Apple has little concern or understanding of hearing trauma prevention. To be fair, how could it fully account for billions of customers, each with fundamentally different perceptions of loudness according to their ears, brains, and situations?
A recent study, published not long after the Gordoa-Reyes lawsuit was filed, showed that more than 1 billion children were at risk for permanent hearing loss due to long-term high levels of loudness exposure. The number is somewhat misleading; the study reviewed other studies conducted over nearly two decades. Still, the reality of listening-device-related hearing loss remains.
This is why, and I know this is going to be difficult to hear (no pun intended), it’s important that we all use headphones and in-ear devices a lot less. Not only does this lessen the chances of acute traumatic events (such as in the case of B.G.), this can alleviate auditory stress that accrues over the long term.
As a seasoned live musical performer, I’m well aware of the damage that can build up over time. I came back from my first European tour last year with an almost immediate bout of tinnitus (I wear in-ear monitors on stage, and often feel the need to crank the volume.) With more awareness and better practices, I’m able to keep these tinnitus spells at a minimum, but I still confront them.
Living in a world in which constant in-ear-device-wearing is the norm can be counterintuitive to better ear health practices. Then again, so much of modern life revolves around physically, psychologically, and emotionally damaging activities. Craning my neck to look at a video of one of the many despicable things happening in the world, then scrolling to see someone post a selfie at the 1% Gala with the caption, “So I did a thing,” hurts basically every sensory apparatus in my being. This is all hypothetical, of course…
We’re all so inundated with information that hurts us. Sure, some of it can be helpful, but there will always be “rational” excuses to keep returning to constant media consumption. That’s pretty much how addiction works. Taking a break from wearing listening devices is one simple step to start pulling back in a healthy way.
Have your AirPods ever been too loud or damaged your ears? Leave a comment below!
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