Can bone conduction headphones cause hearing damage?

But wearing headphones for a long time will have an impact on hearing, and the harm of bone conduction headphones will be much less, but it is recommended not to wear headphones for a long time.

The biggest difference between bone conduction earphone and ordinary earphone is that it opens the ear and transmits the sound directly to the cochlea with the skull. Compared with ordinary headphones, this design does not have the first two defects that ordinary headphones cause ear discomfort.

But for the last point, bone conduction headphones are the same as ordinary headphones when the sound is too loud, and it is impossible to bypass the cochlea as a necessary way. Therefore, even bone conduction headphones can't turn the sound very loud, which will accelerate the loss of the cochlea.

Extended data:

Under normal circumstances, sound waves enter the inner ear through air conduction and bone conduction, and then the lymph inside and outside the inner ear vibrates, and the spiral device completes the sound perception process, and then the auditory nerve generates nerve impulses and presents them to the auditory pathway. After comprehensive analysis of the cerebral cortex, the sound was finally "heard".

Maybe we still have some perceptual knowledge about air conduction (the path is sound wave-auricle-external auditory canal-tympanic membrane-malleus-incus-stapes-vestibular window-outside, internal lymph-spiral organ-auditory nerve-auditory pathway), but we know nothing about bone conduction. Maybe you can understand it by giving an example: covering your ears with your hands and talking to yourself, no matter how small the voice is, we can hear what we are saying, which is the result of bone conduction.

There are two ways of bone conduction: moving and squeezing, which together stimulate the spiral organ to cause hearing. The specific conduction pathway is "sound wave-skull-bone labyrinth-inner ear lymph-spiral organ-auditory nerve-cerebral cortex auditory pathway".

Usually, people don't need to use the skull to feel the sound, but when the lesions of the outer ear and middle ear hinder the sound wave propagation, bone conduction can be used to make up for the hearing. Such as bone conduction hearing aid, bone conduction earphone, etc. Use bone conduction to feel sound.

In most cases, the earphones you come into contact with are "air guide", which is called "air guide earphone"; The earphone made by using the principle of bone conduction is called "bone conduction earphone".

References:

Baidu encyclopedia-bone conduction earphone