We surveyed 425 Australians about their hearing. We asked what they thought about hearing aids, whether they trusted audiologists, and what would keep them from getting help if they needed it. The answers paint a picture of a country that knows exactly what it should do about hearing loss and has absolutely no intention of doing it.
Nearly half of all respondents, 47.7%, did nothing whatsoever about their hearing health in the last twelve months. Not a test, not a Google search, not even a casual mention to their GP. Nothing. That number alone should give us pause. But the reasons behind the inaction are where it gets interesting.
Here are the ten reasons Australians gave for avoiding hearing aids, ranked by how many people selected each one. Some of them make perfect sense. Others will make you want to grab strangers by the shoulders and shake some sense into them.
1. Cost (56.4%)
More than half of all respondents named cost as a top-three barrier. This was the runaway winner, and honestly, fair enough. Hearing aids are expensive. A decent pair can run into the thousands. What’s striking, though, is how much the anxiety varies by age. Among 41 to 50 year olds, the sandwich generation caught between mortgages and school fees and their own ageing parents, cost sensitivity peaked at 66%. For the over-60s? Just 47%. The people closest to needing hearing aids seem slightly less terrified of paying for them. Maybe acceptance does something to the wallet.
2. Concern About How They Look (28.7%)
Almost three in ten Australians said they’d avoid hearing aids because of appearance. Fair warning: it gets worse. Among respondents who actually reported poor hearing, the ones who genuinely need hearing aids, that figure jumps to 40%. The people with the most to gain from the technology are the most worried about being seen wearing it. When we asked what words come to mind when people think of hearing aids, the responses included “ugly,” “bulky,” “stick out,” and “not a great look.” These are devices that have shrunk to the size of a coffee bean, and we’re still stuck in 1987.
3. Not Wanting to Feel Old (28.2%)
Here’s where the data gets properly weird. You’d expect older people to worry most about feeling old. They don’t. Among under-30s, 52% cited this fear. Among the over-70s, just 16%. The youngest adults in the survey carried more than three times the stigma burden of the oldest. You can’t feel old if you already are, apparently. This is the generation that wears AirPods like jewellery but recoils at the thought of a hearing device that does more or less the same thing, just better.
4. Anxiety or Fear About Using Them (27.1%)
More than a quarter of respondents admitted to straight-up fear. Fear of what, exactly? The data doesn’t drill into the specifics, but the open-ended responses offer clues: fear of dependence, fear that the technology will be confusing, fear that the sounds will be overwhelming. One respondent wrote about “the disappointment when I haven’t found one person that is happy with their hearing aid.” That kind of secondhand pessimism does real damage.
5. Nothing Would Stop Me (22.6%)
This one’s the outlier, the contrarian in the room. Nearly a quarter of respondents said they’d get hearing aids without hesitation if they needed them. Among the over-60s, that figure rises to about a third. Age, it turns out, is the great cure for vanity.
6. Feeling Pressured to Buy (19.7%)
One in five Australians said the sales pressure itself is a barrier. This tracks with comments throughout the survey. Respondent after respondent described free hearing tests as a gateway to a hard sell. “Come in sucker,” wrote one. “Feel that testing is just a precursor to selling aids,” wrote another. When the consultation feels like a car dealership, people stop showing up.
7. Too Confusing or Overwhelming (14.5%)
About 15% of respondents said the whole thing is just too much to deal with. Too many options, too much jargon, too many providers with different stories. When 61.5% of Australians don’t even know some hearing clinics are owned by hearing aid manufacturers, you begin to see the scope of the information problem.
8. Not Sure They Would Help (11.1%)
One in nine Australians genuinely doubts whether hearing aids work. In 2026. When the technology can connect to your phone, adjust for background noise, and stream music directly into your ear canal. Eleven percent of the country looks at all of that and says, “Yeah, I’m not convinced.”
9. Don’t Trust Hearing Providers (4.2%)
Small number, big signal. Most Australians trust audiologists. Our survey found that 53.8% trust them completely, and 88.7% trust them at least somewhat. The distrust is aimed squarely at the retail end, the big chains, the hearing-test-as-marketing-funnel model. The 4.2% who don’t trust providers are almost certainly not talking about the clinician. They’re talking about the business.
10. A Bad Experience in the Past (3.4%)
Only 3.4% cited a previous bad experience. That’s remarkably low. It suggests the industry isn’t losing people through bad clinical encounters. It’s losing them before they ever walk through the door, to cost anxiety and stigma and the vague, nagging suspicion that they’ll be sold something they didn’t ask for.
The irony of all this? Only 14.1% of Australians say they’d seek help immediately if they noticed a change in their hearing. The rest are waiting days, weeks, months, or simply hoping the problem goes away on its own. We know what we should do. We know who to trust. We just can’t quite bring ourselves to do it.
Data from The Audiology Place Consumer Perception Survey 2026, a combined sample of 425 Australian respondents across all states and territories.
