Half of British people know someone who needs a hearing check – but only one in five of those told would take action. The research, carried out by hearing health company eargym, surveyed 2,002 UK adults and found when loved ones voiced their concerns, one in four became defensive, offended or upset.
Fewer than a third agreed that they did need a hearing test but despite this, only one in five did actually get their ears checked. But a quarter of those who noticed had never voiced their concerns, with 13 per cent saying they didn’t know how to bring it up, 8 per cent worrying about upsetting the individual in question and 3 per cent thinking it was inappropriate to broach the subject.
The findings point to ongoing stigma surrounding hearing loss, which appears to impact both peoples’ ability to discuss hearing loss with loved ones, and peoples’ willingness to seek help for themselves. This is corroborated by previous research conducted by eargym, which found that one in three adults would feel apprehensive or embarrassed about wearing hearing aids in public.
However this attitude is less pervasive among young people, with a fifth of 18-24 year olds saying they would feel “confident” or “excited” about wearing hearing aids, and 39 per cent saying they’d be “unaffected”. The findings follow calls for greater public awareness of hearing loss as part of a recent campaign led by Dr Hillary Jones in collaboration with the Alzheimer’s Society.
The campaign urged Brits to do more to take care of their hearing, particularly when they notice it changing. Around 18 million people currently have hearing loss in the UK. Andy Shanks, a co-founder at eargym and former DJ, said: “Most of us will know what it feels like to worry that the hearing of somebody in our family is deteriorating.
“Luckily, when it comes to hearing loss, there are many powerful interventions available to protect and prolong our hearing span. But they’re of no use if stigma prevents us from accessing them in the first place. We know from our research that young people are far more open to discussing their hearing health, and are also less fearful of wearing ear plugs and hearing aids to help them.
“This is a great sign. Next, we need to normalise talking about hearing loss with friends and loved ones across every generation, and make seeking help for our hearing as routine as eye and dental check-ups. If we all look after our hearing throughout our lives, get regular hearing checks and listen to the concerns of loved ones, we can significantly lessen the long-term consequences of hearing loss.”
Eargym was set up by former NHS CEO Amanda Philpott and DJ Andy Shanks in 2020, after they were both diagnosed with hearing loss. Amanda has moderate age-related hearing loss, whilst Andy has “notch” or noise-induced hearing loss due to DJ-ing.
Both found hearing loss isolating and it impacted their ability to socialise and communicate. They created eargym to empower others to better understand their hearing health and take proactive steps to protect it.
Eargym’s auditory training games, accessible on-demand via a mobile app, simulate realistic and challenging listening scenarios to improve users’ ability to derive meaning from the sounds they hear.
The games include a “busy barista” exercise, where users must discern speech over a cafe’s bustling background noise; and a “sound seeking” exercise, where users make their way through forests, jungles and oceans to locate the sources of different sounds. Each game is designed to be immersive and to help users practise specific auditory processing skills regularly.
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