Billion youth risk hearing loss from headphones, venues: study

The World Health Organization-led study called on young people to be more careful about their listening habits, and urged governments and manufacturers to do more to protect future hearing.

The analysis published in the journal BMJ Global Health looked at data from 33 studies published in English, Spanish, French and Russian over the last two decades covering more than 19,000 participants aged between 12-34.

It found that 24 percent of the young people had unsafe listening practices while using headphones with devices such as smartphones.

And 48 percent were found to have been exposed to unsafe noise levels at entertainment venues such as concerts or nightclubs.

Combining these findings, the study estimated that between 670,000 to 1.35 billion young people could be at risk of hearing loss.

The wide range is partly because some young people are probably at risk from both factors, said Lauren Dillard, an audiologist at the Medical University of South Carolina and the study's first author.

More than 430 million people -- over five percent of the world's population -- currently have disabling hearing loss, according to the WHO, which estimates  the number will rise to 700 million by 2050.