PANAMA CITY — A Rutherford sophomore hopes to bring awareness to a cause and a concert to his school.
Thomas Le, 16, already enjoyed making short videos as a hobby when he saw an advertisement on Facebook for the Listen Carefully video contest. Sponsored by the Starkey Hearing Foundation, the contest challenged middle and high school students to create a short video highlighting the danger of loud noises in causing hearing loss.
“They say you can lose your hearing mostly at concerts. I actually went to a concert a few weeks ago, so I filmed it there,” Le said.
His video opens on a shot of the concert’s enthusiastic crowd as the noise of the band grows louder and louder, then fades to a high-pitched ringing as the words, “1 in 8 children and teens have permanent hearing loss due to high-volume sounds,” are superimposed on the screen.
The video with the most votes wins the contest, and the grand prize is a concert performed by Grammy-nominated singer Aloe Blacc at the winner’s school.
“As of right now, I’m number one,” Le said. The contest website on Thursday afternooned showed Le in first place with just over 6,900 votes.
The last day to vote is Saturday. The entry with the highest number of votes will be announced Sunday.
As a result of the project, Le said he feels pretty passionate about preventing hearing loss and has even changed some of his own habits.
“Making the video kind of opened your eyes,” he said.
According to the Starkey Hearing Foundation, a national nonprofit that provides free hearing aids to people in need, hearing loss in teens has risen 30 percent in the last decade. While hearing loss is not reversible, it is preventable. The foundation recommends wearing earplugs in loud environments and turning down the volume when listening to music or watching television.