<p>Unless I am working on something requiring 100% of my mind and heavy critical thinking, I actually work better with background noise. My DH needs silence. I think it is a personal ‘how your brain is wired’ thing and each company will have a culture based on the brain wiring of the boss ;)</p>
<p>I’m in high tech and we all wear headphones while working to shut out distractions. I started years ago when a cube-mate would not stop trying to chat with me – most of her chatting was complaining about her job. With the headphones I could pretend to not be able to hear her.</p>
<p>I read an article about this a couple years ago. Someone did some research. Employees claimed, and truly believed, that they were less distracted and more productive when they listened to music, but the researchers found that they were actually more productive WITHOUT the music.</p>
<p>Audiologists are finding hearing loss in teens and twenty-somethings that previously didn’t show up until late-forties/fifties. Rules of thumb: if someone else can hear your music when you’re wearing headphones, it’s dangerously loud OR if the headphone-wearer can’t hear what someone else says to him, it’s dangerously loud.</p>
<p>Say, whaaat?</p>
<p>“Someone did some research.”</p>
<p>And where is it?</p>
<p>“Audiologists are finding hearing loss in teens and twenty-somethings that previously didn’t show up until”</p>
<p>Your points are orthogonal.</p>
<p>^Yikes. I knew there was a reason I should have remained a lurker.</p>
<p>I thought we were just being anecdotal and chatty and folksy, so I chimed in. I’m guessing the article I read was in the Chicago Tribune. If I remember right, the researcher was from a Chicago-based college. Nope, that’s all remember. It was a Sunday morning and I was lying on the couch. Yep, my intellectual cred is that thin.</p>
<p>The hearing stuff? I work with a several audiologists. They’ve been talking about noise-induced high-frequency hearing loss a lot lately, specifically as it relates to the mp3 players. Yep, you got me with “orthogonal.” Had to look it up. I’m guessing you don’t mean “pertaining to right angles,” so I’m left with one of the other definitions - “irrelevant.” But maybe not. Because - as you so helpfully pointed out - what do I know?</p>
<p><“Astonished” darts back to the safety of lurking cave></p>
<p>^^^ "orthogonal in this case means “one point isn’t dependent to the other”, but it is ok to make two separate points in one post, we can handle it. You don’t have to go back in your cave. 
</p>
<p>I can believe that music might be more distracting than silence, even without a cite, but is it more distracting than conversions going on all around you, or people doing conference calls from their cube on speaker phone? I don’t usually have the option of “music or nothing”. In my case music definitely helps.</p>
<p>Y’know, not everyone–even teenagers and college students!–listen to music on headphones with the volume turned up to dangerous levels.</p>
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<p>So everyone that listens to music on mp3 players has hearing loss?</p>
<p>
Nowhere in Astonished’s post does the word “everyone” appear. That’s your extension of the point, and it is of course wrong. I don’t know why you are being so pedantic.</p>
<p>Mp3 player-caused hearing loss is not a new idea, or all that debatable even. All mp3 players can produce sound at volumes that can cause hearing loss. The manual for the IPod contains a warning about hearing loss, and Apple has been sued about it.</p>
<p>A quick google search on “mp3 player hearing loss” turns up articles talking about this from 6 year ago on the first page.</p>
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<p>The poster provided two reasons against music in the workplace.</p>
<p>I merely asked for evidence - you post research, you should back it up.</p>
<p>Then there’s the expert witness as he sees a lot of audiologists. I
pointed out that it doesn’t apply to everyone that listens to music.
Those that listen to music with the volume too high in the workplace
probably do it elsewhere too. The aspect of the workplace is irrelevent.</p>
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<p>Well, cigarette packs have labels too. But what does this have to do
with music in the workplace.</p>
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<p>What does this have to do with music in the workplace?</p>
<p>Got into the office and I saw someone else in shorts. I assume that the two managing directors in our floor and wing will start wearing them soon and then most people will be wearing shorts in the office. I guess that’s a little like music only a lot more visible.</p>
<p>I’ve been listening to music in my ‘cube farm’ office area for years and years. I ‘know’ it makes me more productive and helps me focus while I’m writing code and doing other things. It helps to mask the external chatter coming from other cubes, phone conversations that can be overheard, and sometimes even the ‘loud silence’ (if you know what I mean). The music isn’t a distraction and I don’t know why some people assume it would be. What IS a distraction is overhearing others conversing. </p>
<p>Most people in my group, software developers, listen to music as well for the same reasons. I did actually know one software developer who’d wear full cup hearing protectors (i.e. not headphones with music) to try to shut out any sound. It worked for him but I’d hate it but - different strokes for different folks - we’re not all the same.</p>
<p>So to the OP’s point - if it’s accepted at your kid’s workplace and if the nature of the work is that she has lots of time at a desk doing work that doesn’t involve much interaction with others, it’s fine and not unusual at all. Unless it’s something very commonplace at her workplace though, she should check with her manager to see whether it’s not recommended or is fine.</p>
<p>Lawyers do this all the time. Where we have our own offices, playing music softly in the room is accepted. We are professionals and we have to get the work done well and on time. For the most part we are trusted to determine whether listening to the radio at work helps or hurts.</p>
<p>Would anyone’s opinion change if the intern is working in a federal government agency?</p>
<p>Astonished is not making the stuff up. I also had read somewhere about hearing loss in teens.</p>
<p>‘Rules of thumb: if someone else can hear your music when you’re wearing headphones, it’s dangerously loud OR if the headphone-wearer can’t hear what someone else says to him, it’s dangerously loud.’</p>
<p>I think that etiquette lady also said something like that,</p>
<p>
That’s too broad of a scenario - it really comes down to the norms for the particular job in the particular office - not even the agency.</p>
<p>You could always ask your D if it’s normal for people in her position at her office have headphones on listening to music. That may set your mind at ease.</p>
<p>"“Someone did some research.”</p>
<p>And where is it?</p>
<p>“Audiologists are finding hearing loss in teens and twenty-somethings that previously didn’t show up until”</p>
<p>Your points are orthogonal."</p>
<p>One in Five U.S. Adolescents Has Hearing Loss, Researchers Find</p>
<p>Hearing loss among U.S. adolescents has surged, probably because of the use of devices such as earbuds for listening to music, doctors say.</p>
<p>Researchers surveyed a sample of children ages 12 to 19 in 2005 and 2006 and found that 19.5 percent had some hearing loss, compared with 14.9 percent in a study covering the years 1988 to 1994, according to a report published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Hearing loss of 25 decibels or more – enough that the children were often aware of the deficit – increased to 5.3 percent of the sample, from 3.5 percent in the earlier group.</p>
<p>Listening to loud sounds through earbuds – the tiny electronic speakers that fit into ears, for use with personal music players – is probably the main reason that more adolescents are losing some of their hearing, said William Slattery, director of clinical studies at the House Ear Institute, a Los Angeles medical practice, who wasn’t involved in today’s study. </p>
<p>[One</a> in Five U.S. Adolescents Has Hearing Loss, Researchers Find - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1881130,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1881130,00.html</a></p>
<p>I don’t know why you’re posting all that crap about hearing loss as it is orthogonal to the subject at hand.</p>
<p>Are those adolescents losing their hearing listening to music in their internships?</p>
<p>^ You asked for proof of that crap.</p>
<p>“Someone did some research.”</p>
<p>And where is it?"</p>
<p>post 24</p>
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<p>The research was about productivity and listening to music; not about hearing damage.</p>
<p>Please try to pay attention to the orthogonal points.</p>