We tend to associate headphones with angsty teenage rebellion—the perfect way to blast music and ignore authority figures. But in the modern era of smart devices, kids aged 12 and younger are increasingly wearing headphones and earbuds as well. A new poll suggests that in the U.S. around two thirds of parents of children aged five to 12 have kids who use these listening devices regularly. And given the difficulty in monitoring such accessories’ volume, this trend may be putting their hearing at risk.
“This issue of how to manage the headphones that kids are using and how to get a handle on the volume continues to be an ongoing, challenging debate,” says Deepa Sekhar, a pediatrician at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the new survey.
Hearing loss and tinnitus—a persistent sound such as ringing in the ears—affect tens of millions of Americans. These conditions have many root causes, but among the most common is noise exposure. Excessive noise can damage the thousands of tiny hair-shaped cells inside our ears. These delicate hairs vibrate when sound waves strike them but can be damaged or eventually killed by high-volume audio. Children’s ears are especially vulnerable to this type of damage. “Once those [hair cells] die, they don’t grow back,” says Susan Woolford, a pediatric health researcher at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the poll of 1,152 parents, which was conducted through the university’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.
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Some headphones can help block out some dangerously loud noises, such as roaring motorcycles or rock concerts, but they can also pump potentially damaging soundwaves directly into our ears. “If there’s background noise, the natural thing you do is bump up the volume,” Sekhar says. In noisy environments such as planes, buses or crowded streets, it’s hard to avoid using headphones at unhealthy decibel levels.
From 2013 to 2022 global headphone sales nearly doubled, soaring from 286 million units to 553 million. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the availability of headphones has increased alongside the rise of music streaming and podcasting apps, so, too, has headphone-associated hearing loss. Beyond hearing damage and tinnitus, persistent exposure to noise is associated with headaches, increased blood pressure, sleep disruptions and stress. But most previous research has focused on the headphone habits of adults and teenagers, even though these accessories are increasingly marketed as gaming and travel essentials for children. “What this poll highlights is that [the] risk is starting at a much younger age,” Woolford says.
Noise above 120 decibels, roughly the volume of a jetliner taking off, can cause immediate hearing loss. But even less intense sounds can damage hearing if a person is subject to them for several hours straight. For example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration considers continuous exposure to noise above 85 decibels, the equivalent of operating a forklift or hair dryer, over the course of an eight-hour shift to be hazardous for workers.
And these are just the limits for adults. “The younger you are, the lower the threshold that is safe,” Woolford says. Young people are more susceptible to hearing damage than adults because their ear canals tend to be narrower. This can amplify certain sounds as they travel to the inner ear. For preadolescents, prolonged exposure to noise above 70 decibels is considered hazardous by most pediatricians. (For infants, the limit tops out at around 60 decibels. Some studies suggest that even placing a white noise machine too close to a newborn’s head can lead to hearing loss.)
According to the survey, while about two thirds of parents reported that their children used headphones or earbuds regularly, only about three out of five tried to limit that use. One sixth of parents reported that their children used headphones for at least two hours a day. Woolford recommends that parents encourage their children to follow the “60/60 rule”: no more than 60 minutes of headphone use at a time at no more than 60 percent volume.
Sekhar points out that limiting headphone use doesn’t have to mean forgoing digital entertainment. If kids are at home or in their room, they can still play music or other audio from an external speaker. In public places, such as planes, parents may want to consider giving their children noise-canceling headphones so they don’t have to pump the volume quite so high—although these devices should be avoided when kids are in spaces where they need to be aware of their surroundings, such as when they are riding a bike or crossing the street.
Parents can also purchase volume-limited headphones and earbuds for their kids. Still, these devices may not work as well as advertised, Woolford cautions. A 2016 analysis by the New York Times’ product review service Wirecutter found that some had a maximum volume that exceeded safe levels. Ultimately, Sekhar would like to see companies develop a set of headphones that gives parents a better idea of exactly how many decibels their children are being exposed to. “Sometimes it’s completely unclear how loud [the sound] is,” she says, but giving parents—and kids—that knowledge could help prevent avoidable hearing loss.