system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Do bone conduction earphones protect hearing?

I did a bridge climb and they provided bone conduction earphones because it was so windy.  [For those who haven't heard of them, my basic understanding is that they sit on the boney area in front of your ears and transmit the vibrations directly into your body (to your inner ear) so there is less interference than when the sound travels through the air with regular earphones.]

*Does using these bone conduction earphones in comparison to regular earphones protect (or preserve?) your hearing?*  I was wondering  (and this may be assuming some incorrect points) whether someone using bone conduction earphones instead of regulars throughout their life might have better hearing when they get old.
gpt
There's no reason to believe that they would. Hearing loss is usually caused by damage to the inner ear, which is still getting as much sound exposure with bone conduction as it would through the normal path of sound.