Building Community Through Hearing Assistance
A new study at Cigna reveals that loneliness is at epic proportions in the United States. The UCLA Loneliness Scale indicated that nearly half of all Americans feel alone; older adults with hearing loss feel isolated, but Gen Z is the loneliest of all. The article suggests that getting enough sleep and exercise can help combat loneliness.
The best way of dealing with loneliness is to have a sense of community. Learning, work, and friendship are important aspects of living a full life and not understanding another person’s language or having trouble hearing them creates isolation. Without language translation or hearing assistance, people tend to congregate in their own groups and this creates exclusion. However, there are many locations for community building already in place: schools, churches, senior centers, sporting events and the workplace, to name a few. The key is to create social and cultural inclusion so that everyone feels welcome and understood.
Beyond addressing loneliness, there are benefits of cultural and language inclusion. It’s been proven that children who are taught in their own language learn faster and make better grades, and companies with inclusive policies have higher earnings.
A sporting event bypasses cultural and language barriers as well as hearing impairments, and sharing a game can bond a group. Audio streaming for bars and restaurants is a great way to include everyone, no matter which team they are rooting for. Not only that, many adults do not wish to admit that they have a hearing impairment as it implies disability, so offering an audio solution that helps groups to bond can make it easier for those with hearing disabilities to feel safe to ask for what they need.
To create stronger community at church and help to overcome language barriers, the congregation can use assisted listening devices for churches to translate the entire sermon into the non-dominant language so that parishioners understand what it’s like to hear in a language that they may not fully understand. Plus, those with hearing impairments can feel more included if they are able to use an audio streaming device with earbuds so that they don’t miss a word of the service no matter what language it’s in.
We hope that you will help to address the issue of loneliness by entering into a community or creating one that will show kindness to others. If you’d like to learn more about how our audio solutions could help, contact us.