What Do Teens Want in a Hearing Aid? Top 3 Most Important Hearing Aid Features.

I spend most of my time talking about hearing treatment for Adults.  However, the listening demands for teens are perhaps even more complex than they are for adults.  If you are a teen, you likely find yourself in dynamic and difficult listening environments likely due to your involvement in Junior High, High School, College, and all of the social settings you find yourself in outside of a classroom setting.

So let's take a look at some of the key areas of interest when it comes to the Hearing Aid needs of Teens.

1. Being able to adapt to constantly changing environments - You probably find yourself in different listening situations constantly.  Whether it is on a school bus, in a car, in a cafeteria, in a classroom, with a group of friends, or at a school sporting event, each of them require different hearing aid settings to hear optimally.  

2. Connectivity - Let's face it, in the 21st century, to be socially engaged, you need to integrate with technology.  The more connected your hearing aids are with technology, the more connected you are with family, friends, classmates, and even teachers.  If you are like other teens, you are spending between 6 and 9 hours per day online.  Connecting to social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, & Snapchat isn't only fun, it is almost a necessity.

3. Rechargeability - There is a good chance that the only thing you own that isn't rechargeable is your hearing aids.  Just like a smartphone, teens want their electronics to be rechargeable.  Charge them once at night and have them work the entire next day.  

These are just a few of the key things that Phonak learned from their Teen Advisory Board.  Noticing the absence of Teen Voices in the Hearing Industry, Phonak selected 8 Teen advisors, 4 from the United States and 4 from Canada, to be on their Advisory Board board so Phonak could learn exactly what teens want in a hearing aid.  Each one of these teens brought their unique experiences to the table to help shape Phonak’s perspective on what things are important to your age group.

Phonak's new Marvel Hearing Aids check all the boxes when it comes to adapting to changing environments, connectivity, and rechargeability.  The New AutoSense OS 3.0 automatically changes your program settings based on your environment.  So if you go from a classroom to work to a restaurant or on a car ride with a friend, the Marvel operating system will adjust automatically to the settings that will help you hear best in that environment.  

Marvel hearing aids also connect to basically anything.  Whether you have an iPhone or Android phone, they can stream audio directly into both ears.  This means if you want to listen to music, podcasts, video games, or YouTube videos, you can do this from any device.  Phone calls are completely hands free because the hearing aid microphones are used to pick up your voice and the push buttons let you answer and hang up a phone call.Marvel hearing aids also hold a massive 30 hours of battery life on a single charge.  If you have long days and you stream a lot of audio, you need strong batteries.  The lithium batteries charge super quick and hold that charge for a long time.  No longer do you have to worry about your hearing aid batteries going out at the worst time.  Lithium batteries have proven to be the most reliable Even if you do think you will run out of batteries, a quick 15 minute charge will get you 30 hours of additional battery life.  

As a Teenager, you are at a time when you can start making your own decisions on your hearing healthcare.  You can also advocate for yourself and others with hearing loss.  Start figuring out what is important to you and select hearing aids and a hearing care provider that can help accomplish your goals.  There is no good reason to let hearing loss prevent you from doing anything that you want to do.