Within minutes of waking up, Cusick, 18, clutches his iPod, pops in his earphones and plays some fast-paced music to get his day rocking. Something with strong drum beats — maybe Metallica, said the University of Colorado freshman.

He falls asleep listening to slower, alternative rock, and he usually wakes up in the middle of the night to pull the plug on the music. By then, songs are stuck in his head and play in his dreams.

The digital audio players are almost essential accessories for high school and college students. If a visitor from another planet were to land on CU’s campus, it might wonder what the white tentacle-like things are that hang from young people’s ears.

One professor says the iPod addiction isn’t much different from the Walkman fad of the 1980s. A hearing expert says much like the Walkmans, the pulsating beats thumping into people’s ears through iPods could lead to hearing loss.

For Cusick, though, silence is a distraction.

“It becomes second nature to have music playing all the time,” he said. “I feel uncomfortable when it’s quiet. It’s like silence is deafening.”

Disco music accompanies him while he jogs, and, in large lectures with 300-plus students, he leaves an earplug in his right ear to listen to Radiohead and uses his left ear to listen to his professor.

“You walk around campus, and it’s like every third person has the white earplugs in,” Cusick said.

Adam Pasha, a CU freshman who listens to music on his iPod only a couple of hours a day, notices the same trend.

“Everyone seems to have one,” he said. “It’s like an iPod and a Nalgene bottle are college necessities.”

Deanna Meinke, a doctoral candidate at CU in the speech, language and hearing sciences, said two factors determine whether the listening can contribute to hearing loss: How long people listen to music and how loud.

She said recommended maximum exposure time is eight hours if somebody is listening to music at 85 decibels, which is the equivalent of a noisy restaurant. If somebody listens to music at 100 decibels — which could be compared to a woodworking class — the recommended exposure time is 15 minutes.

By The Associated Press