[ddingus]

In addition to poor isolation noted here, many cheap-o earbuds have a horrible response curve.

They deliver way too much sound in narrow frequency ranges, usually the mid-range, say 1-4Khz, while not enough in the bass, and it's a mixed bag higher up through 10Khz+

People will turn it up, until they are hearing everything, and they do very significant damage to those "hot spot" frequency ranges, despite the overall perception of volume seeming reasonable to them.

Add overly compressed music, and or crappy audio output, and the need to drive it loud happens to nearly everybody.

There will be a whole generation of people, some who we are already seeing struggle with this, requiring adaptive sound options more early in life than is typical.