Lawsuit Alleges AirPods Damaged Boy’s Eardrum

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Those loud emergency alerts can be exceptionally annoying. Back in the before times, while working in an office, I remember a cacophony of sound every time there was severe weather or a child went missing. Every phone in the office—and there were more phones than people—would go off with a loud, obnoxious alert sound. I’ve had headphones on before and had to quickly pull them out because of how loud it is. Fortunately, it never permanently damaged my hearing.

Some people weren’t so lucky.

A 12-year-old boy was watching a movie on Netflix with his AirPods Pro headphones. An AMBER Alert played on his device. It was so loud, it “ripped open” his eardrum and damaged his inner ear. He’s had “vertigo, tinnitus, and nausea” since the incident, and now needs a hearing aid.

Apple has built in hearing protection to their iPhones and the Apple Watch, to help track exposure to loud sounds. But in this case, the ear damage comes from those devices.

Extremely Loud Alerts

Volume control on an Android phone is a pain. You have one for media, another for calls, there’s ring and notification volume, and alarm volume. It’s all separate. Android has gotten better at figuring out which volume you most likely want to adjust when you press the volume buttons, but it only works when something is currently happening. It could be media, a call, an alarm, whatever you’re currently doing will decide which volume is adjusted.

iOS doesn’t have this. It does have a separate volume for media and for notifications, but doesn’t make that clear. Instead, it lumps everything into two groups: notifications, the “Ringer” volume, and your media. The media volume adjustment shows up on the side, next to your volume buttons, while the ringtone adjustment shows up at the top. Apple doesn’t make it easy to adjust these individually. If you’re watching something, you may not realize the ringtone and alert volume is higher. On top of that, emergency alerts are always played at max volume, regardless of what you’ve set them to.

This can be very dangerous for anyone wearing earbuds.

Apple’s AirPod Pro headphones also have a volume not meant to ever be listened to directly. When you lose your AirPods, you can have them play a sound far louder than they’d ever play in your ear. This sound will help you find your AirPods. However, it’s possible that this was the volume an alert was played at, damaging a boy’s hearing. Even without the AirPods’ extra-loud volume, it’s possible the standard max volume alert could cause hearing damage.

A Family’s Lawsuit Against Apple

A 12-year-old child, identified as “B.G.” in the lawsuit, had been watching a video. From there, his life was permanently changed by an alert. An alert to help adults look out for kidnapped or missing children, instead damaged a young boy’s hearing forever. The lawsuit claims he suffered ruptured eardrums, which lead to nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, loss of hearing, difficulty balancing, and permanent hearing impairment. The physical and emotional trauma of going through this, especially at such a young age, is a factor in the lawsuit as well.

Users have zero control over the volume of their emergency alerts, and they’re on by default. Apple never makes that clear to the user. That means that, thanks to a possible bug in the volume control on the AirPods Pro, and these incredibly loud alert sounds, anyone could be at risk of the same hearing damage this boy suffered. This isn’t just a serious issue for one person, it’s potentially dangerous for everyone. The lawsuit claims the device was defective, but since the headphones appeared to be working as intended before the deafening sound was played, it’s possible other AirPods could be capable of deafening sounds without the user knowing. AirPods can play extremely loud sounds when you lose them to help you find them. It’s possible the alert played at this volume, which no content or alert should ever play at.

How to Disable Emergency Alerts

If you’re thinking Apple’s negligence put a family through a lot of pain and permanently damaged a young boy’s hearing and don’t want to be next, you may want to disable emergency alerts entirely. You can’t mute AMBER Alerts or Public Safety Alerts, but you can set up Emergency Alerts to deliver silently when your phone is on silent. For AMBER Alerts and Public Safety Alerts, you may just want to turn them off.

To do so, go into Settings -> Notifications. Then scroll past all of your apps, all the way to the bottom. There you’ll find a section labeled “Government Alerts.” Here you can disable AMBER Alerts and Public Safety Alerts. In Emergency Alerts, you can turn off “Always Play Sound.” This will allow you to mute these alerts with the mute switch. You can alternatively turn these off too.

These emergency alerts serve a useful purpose. However, if a bug in your AirPods could cost you your hearing, would you really want to risk it? For how incredibly buggy and poorly designed the AirPods Pro earbuds are, I certainly wasn’t about to take that risk. AirPods users for years have complained about painfully loud alerts coming from their AirPods. I myself have experienced it. Apple’s aware of the problem, but it seems it hasn’t been worth their time to fix. Hopefully this boy is the last to suffer hearing damage over Apple’s mistakes.

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Sources:

• Samantha Cole, Motherboard
• Juli Clover, MacRumors
• Joe Wituschek, iMore