They don’t want to recognize it or have a hard time telling people about it. I think a lot of people with hearing loss feel socially isolated, especially if they didn’t grow up with it. When I’m having trouble hearing, I also just retreat from conversations. I get a lot of pain in my shoulders because I’m constantly leaning in to figure out what people are saying. Sometimes it’s harder to connect with people - you think they said but you’re not sure. And your chances of mishearing somebody go up. It’s hard enough when there’s no background noise, but when you add excessively loud background noise, you’re constantly guessing. You hear fragments of what they’re saying. Leaning forward, trying to separate what is noisy from what is the person saying. It requires a lot of mental energy and focus throughout your entire body. “I get a lot of pain in my shoulders because I’m constantly leaning in to figure out what people are saying” Greg Scott Can you help me understand what it’s like to navigate our noisy soundscape when you have hearing loss? And so we underappreciate the challenges people who are hard of hearing face. Hearing loss is sometimes described as an invisible handicap because many people live with it but we can’t see it and don’t always know it’s there. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. In a conversation over FaceTime, so Greg could lip-read, I learned about the patterns he’s discovered in his SoundPrint data, including the types of restaurants that are the loudest and which to avoid, and how he manages to find quiet spots even in cities his app doesn’t yet cover. His experience has inspired him to become a champion for all the people who have ever strained to hear their companions in a restaurant. Scott, like nearly 40 million American adults, is hard of hearing. (The app’s 2.0 version was released in April 2019.) I wanted to learn more about SoundPrint, so I called its creator, Greg Scott*, in April 2018, when this piece was first published. Most venues registered on the app have volumes that are not conversation-friendly or could be deafening.
The app has a decibel reader, and its noise reviews are generated by SoundPrint users, who can submit their decibel readings - from quiet and moderate to loud and very loud. Submit them to us via email at or tweet them using the hashtag #VoxNoisePollution.īut most exciting is the fact that SoundPrint runs off citizen science.
Check the noise levels at your exercise studio and submit them to us:ĭownload a decibel-reading app like the NIOSH Sound Level Meter, SoundPrint, or Decibel X Pro and take a screengrab of the decibel reading in your exercise class.