TORONTO - A newly launched pilot project is encouraging high school students to dial down the volume on their digital devices to help combat noise-induced hearing loss.
Students at a Catholic secondary school in north Toronto took part Monday in iHearYa!, a musical assembly blending live music and multimedia where they learned about the inner workings of the ear and what teens can do to protect their hearing from preventable damage.
iHearYa! has also launched an interactive website where students can find out more about noise-induced hearing loss, and they're encouraged to create and upload music, poetry, artwork, stories and videos to help educate others and raise awareness about the cause.
Canadian musicians Jordan Croucher and Ana Miura led the assembly, interspersing performances and audience sing-a-longs with group participation exercises and on-screen graphics highlighting facts and figures on hearing loss, sources of noise and decibel levels.
The assembly also featured live and taped testimonials from teens who have lived most of their lives with hearing loss encouraging other teens to take steps to prevent unnecessary loss of hearing.
Beyond just cranking the knob down, the duo also offered alternate suggestions to combat hearing loss, like wearing earplugs at concerts, standing back from speakers and simply taking a break from the headphones to help safeguard hearing.
To further drive home the message, Croucher and Miura played two alternate takes of a song snippet each had recorded: a clear version demonstrating what it would sound like to someone with normal hearing, the second, more muffled, muted version highlighting the change due to moderate hearing loss.
A survey of 145 Ontario high school students conducted by the Hearing Foundation of Canada, who are spearheading iHearYa!, found that 30 per cent of them were listening to digital music at levels of 91 decibels or higher for an average of 2.9 hours a day.
That's equivalent to the sound of a lawnmower, and marks a level and length of time at which researchers say long-term damage can take place.
Hearing Foundation of Canada programs manager Gael Hannan said the idea for iHearYa! emerged following a youth listening summit held last fall, which brought 30 adults and 30 youth together to figure out what it would take to develop an effective hearing loss prevention program for high school students. Ten of those teens had hearing loss.
"We came out the other side with really clear messages," Hannan said. "Students said 'Don't preach at us, we don't want old people telling us what to do. We want to have an impact. We want to be champions and we want to be the able to help spread the message."'
Grade 11 student Marwa Nather took part in the listening summit and spoke to fellow students at Dante Alighieri Academy on Monday about living with hearing loss, which wasn't discovered until she was in Grade 7.
Now 16, Nather has severe to profound hearing loss, able to hear vibrations but nothing at high frequencies, like bird chirping.
"I hope that they understand what it is to live with hearing loss and that they have a choice while many of us, hard of hearing, we didn't have a choice," she said of her classmates following the presentation. "So if they have a choice, why are they throwing it away?"
The Toronto stop marked the second of three in Ontario for the iHearYa! pilot project. It started first at a Sudbury high school, and will next travel to Strathroy, west of London.
