What will more likely damage your hearing: earbuds or in-ear earphones?

Neither device damages hearing, and the culprits are high volume and long time of the exposure.

To help you understand better why too loud sound cause hearing loss, Please see the structure of the human ear:

1. Sound waves (air vibrations) enter the ear canal and hit the eardrum.

2. These sound waves vibrate the eardrum membrane and ossicles

3. Vibrations passing through the fluid in the spiral inner ear (called the cochlea) cause tiny hearing hair cells in the cochlea to vibrate. Hair cells detect movement and turn it into an Electrochemical signal acceptable to the auditory nerve.

4. The auditory nerve sends information to the brain through electrical impulses, and the brain interprets and understands the information.

Look at young people's hair cells,they are arrayed.

And this are old people’s hair cells,much less than the young’s.

When listening to music loudly with headphones for a long time,your hair cells will fall out.Please note that these hair cells are non-renewable. More generally, one is missing.

Therefore, no matter earbuds or in-ear earphones , unreasonable use can lead to hearing damage.

Here I have some suggestions to help you prevent hearing loss:

• Limit your exposure

In addition to keeping the volume low, you could also try limiting the amount of time you spend listening to your headphones. A good rule of thumb to try out is known as the “60-60 rule” which means that if you listen to your headphones at 60% of the max volume, then you shouldn’t spend more than 60 minutes with them on.

• Turn down the volume

The best way to prevent hearing loss from headphone use is to not turn the volume up very high when you’re listening to your phone or any other mobile listening device for that matter. You see, the leading cause of noise-induced hearing loss is exposure to loud noises. So, it really helps to regulate the volume better when listening to headphones.

• Use noise-canceling headphones

One of the main reasons why people use headphones so much in the first place is to cancel out the loud noises around them. However, you don’t have to increase the volume to achieve this, and you can simply invest in noise-canceling headphones instead.