Man develops auditory damage from gaming five hours per day

Authored by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition

The UNILAD website reports that a British man who played video games five to six hours per day for 15 years suffered permanent auditory damage. Gamer Avik Banerjee played popular games like Call of Duty and Fortnite, becoming such a good player that he won $44,000 in a Call of Duty tournament.

Banerjee played the games with the volume turned up to maximum. That could be as loud as 100 to 125 A-weighted* decibels (dBA). He claims he never saw any warnings about using his headphones or playing video games at too high a sound volume, but he may have discovered something if he'd read more information provided by the game manufacturer.

His auditory damage includes not only severe hearing loss, but damage to his balance. In addition to hearing, the balance system is considered part of the auditory system. Like the cochlea, the balance system has hair cells, which are thought to be more susceptible to damage from low-frequency sounds.

Photo credit: Alexander Kovalev

Concerns about auditory damage from headphone use are not new. With the popularity of video games, the World Health Organization just released new guidelines for video game output. 

The only evidence-based safe noise exposure level is a time-weighted average of 70 decibels for a day. The actual safe noise exposure to prevent hearing loss may be much lower, only 55 dBA for a single noise event and a daily average of 55 to 60 dB for a day.

It’s too bad that Banerjee learned too late that noise damages the ears. We hope that others will learn from his experience and turn down the volume when they play video games.

*A-weighting adjusts sound measurements to approximate the frequencies heard in human speech.