You don’t have to be in the Super Bowl stadium to be exposed to a lot of noise during the game. A new Apple Watch study found that noise levels across America are significantly higher than normal for about nine hours on Super Bowl Sundays.
On average, across the US, you’re likely to be exposed to noise levels between 1.5 and 3 decibels higher than usual – which is a lot worse than it sounds when it comes to potential hearing damage …
You’d expect things to be pretty loud in the stadium during the Super Bowl, but things get pretty loud on game days no matter where you are.
The Apple Hearing Study – a collaboration between the University of Michigan and Apple – uses the Noise app on Apple Watches worn by more than 115,000 volunteers to learn about noise exposure. For this particular study, researchers wanted to know whether noise levels in the US were higher during major events, even if you were nowhere near the location.
We analyzed noise levels during the past four Super Bowls (2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024). We looked at average noise levels 6 hours before and 6 hours after the start of the game on Super Bowl Sunday and compared them to noise levels at the same time on the following Sunday […]
On average, across the US, we saw about a 1.5 to 3 decibel increase in noise levels among participants during the past four Super Bowl games compared to levels on the Sunday following the game. The average for the 2021 to 2024 Super Bowls [shows] this increase started about 3 hours before the game started and lasted about 3 hours after the game ended.
That doesn’t sound like a lot, but decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale, so a 3dB increase represents twice as much sound energy.
The problem is that our ears don’t perceive it in this way. We can thus be exposed to potentially harmful levels of noise without being aware of it. The university recommends using the Noise app on your Apple Watch to monitor your exposure, and to use earplugs or earphones with noise cancellation when attending noisy events.
Photo by Jumping Jax on Unsplash
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