Oh no I think it's a very bad thing. My implication is that I either shouldn't have bought an iPhone 7, or maybe that Apple pulled the headphone jack a decade too early.

I always leave the dongle on in-ear headphones, that way I never forget them. Sure, the problem still exists for listening in a new environment (a friend's car, as someone here gave as example), but not with your own headphones.

(mind you, I do not listen with in-ear headphones when I actually want to enjoy music, but they sure are a lot easier to bring with me than my "real headphones")

Edit, as a bonus, as I almost always have my in-ears with me, is that I most often also have access to the dongle while in new environments as well.

I really enjoy the sound from in ear headphones, but I had an issue where wearing them too often was causing ear wax build up near my ear drum. I actually temporarily lost hearing in my left ear because because of this. Basically, the ear buds did not allow the ear wax to naturally flow out of the ear. This caused wax buildup near my ear drum and reduced the ability for my ear drum to vibrate. I had to rinse my ear with warm water every day to eventually clear it up. Just a cautionary tale.

My experience was just that the wax buildup is gross, and the popping sound from the headphone losing, regaining, and losing seal was really loud and uncomfortable. Now I just use high quality over-ear headphones, which sound better to me anyway.

well they did come out with a replacement for corded earphones, just that cost is nearly ten times as great as what they replace and there is now a market for creating an lanyard so you don't lose the individual Airpods.

I have no inherent issue with the removing the headphone jack since the included earpods do use a lightning connector. Not sure if those existed at launch

Not using headphones too often is a very good thing, unless there are at a sufficiently low volume (which is never the case).

My life changed slightly when I decided to enable the EU recommended setting for volume on the iPhone. Not sure if this feature is available outside of EU but it's great.

It is on android.

Oh, you're talking about hearing damage. I'm simply talking about listening to music in general.