A new test allows headphone wearers and concert goers to determine just how bad their hearing has gotten
AsapSCIENCE recently posted a video entitled "How Old Are Your Ears?" in which viewers/listeners gauge their hearing "age." The test moves from everyone who isn't hearing impaired, to under 50, under 40, under 30, under 24, and under 20 with varying hertz levels. The results, at least among various A.V. Club employees and YouTube commenters, have been depressing.
The narrator goes on to nicely explain (like a young doctor kindly telling someone he or she is going to die soon) that the inner ear cannot regenerate hair cells, the nerves responsible for picking up frequencies. These cells are slowly destroyed throughout our empty, meaningless lives, never to be repaired. The hairs that pick up higher frequencies, which could be said to represent our fleeting youth, are the first to go, until one day they all just disappear and the world becomes quiet as death slowly creeps nearer.