The Super Bowl is the most-viewed broadcast in the United States, and it is also an extremely loud affair where the cheers, boos, gatherings, bars, and large screens could be as harsh on the eardrums as a defensive player is on a quarterback.
Scholars from the Apple Hearing Study, a partnership between the University of Michigan and Apple, explored the issue of Super Bowl noise by assessing data collected from the Noise app on Apple Watch devices belonging to over 115,000 participants in the Apple Hearing Study.
Their evaluation suggests that sound levels on Super Bowl Sundays are generally twice as high as those recorded on subsequent Sundays and are loudest in states whose teams either played in or hosted the Super Bowl when compared to other states.
According to the summary of the study, researchers urge individuals to keep track of their exposure to noise (by utilizing the Noise app on Apple Watch or iPhone app, for example) and to safeguard their hearing (such as by using earplugs) while attending or viewing loud events to ensure they can enjoy themselves safely.
This ongoing hearing investigation is thought to be the first to record an uptick in sound from a transitory event that is concurrently experienced by individuals across the nation.
“The Apple Hearing Study demonstrates the incredible potential of crowdsourced data collection throughout the United States and enables us to conduct analyses that were previously unattainable without wearable technologies and smart devices,” stated noise exposure scientist Richard Neitzel, a professor of environmental health sciences and global public health at U-M’s School of Public Health, which heads the research regarding the risks, causes, and prevention of increasingly prevalent hearing loss.
To understand the sounds produced by the Super Bowl, researchers analyzed data from Super Bowl Sundays in the years 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, comparing them to noise levels, quantified in decibels, recorded on Sundays that followed those events.
They discovered that sound levels surged by as much as 3 decibels to a range of 68-70 decibels overall, on the days of the monumental game.
To provide context, 65 decibels is comparable to the volume of a typical conversation, while 70 decibels equates to the sound level of a vacuum cleaner. An increase of 3 decibels signifies a doubling of sound energy, whereas a rise of 10 decibels indicates a tenfold increase in sound energy—neither of which is desirable if the aim is to prevent hearing loss.
“Minor alterations in decibel levels signify a substantial change in the degree of noise that our ears encounter, and such slight changes often go unnoticed,” Neitzel remarked. “It’s crucial to bear in mind that even subtle variations in decibel levels that are barely perceptible can significantly impact hearing.”
The Super Bowl analysis is the latest contribution from the Apple Hearing Study, which initiated in 2019 to deepen the understanding of how hearing-related behaviors and sound exposure can influence hearing health and broader health aspects linked to hearing.
