We Tested Headphones for Schoolkids. Some Were Worryingly Loud.

Noise-induced hearing loss is a growing problem (PDF) that could affect millions of young people, and we’ve written extensively on the risks inherent in non-volume-limited headphone use for kids. Although parents have some control over their children’s headphone use at home, what happens when kids have to use school headphones for in-class learning? The use of digital media in education is on the rise, which means headphone use in the classroom is also on the rise. But are school headphones safe? How loud are the kids listening—and for how long? We decided to measure some school headphones and talk to parents and kids about their usage to determine, as best we could, whether kids might be experiencing dangerous levels of sound while they’re at school.

How loud can school headphones get?

For our guide to the best kids headphones, we’ve tested nearly every headphone marketed for kids’ use at home to determine if they stay within safe volume ranges. But we haven’t explored the separate category of headphones being sold directly to educational institutions via sites like School Specialty and Learning Headphones. Apparently it’s big business, with one headphone representative telling us their company had 2.7 million headphones in over 10,000 schools across the United States.

When we looked over the headphones offered on several of these websites, we were surprised to find, among the dozens of models, only a few that were advertised as volume-limited headphones: the JLab JBuddies Folding and JBuddies Studio Wireless, and the Avid AE-25. And the volume-limiting feature wasn’t prominently listed—we had to go digging through the specs to find any reference to it.

This experience left us wondering how loud the typical headphones sold to schools could get, so we purchased a bunch of models to test, including the Avid AE-36, the Califone CA-2, the Egghead 1005FAUSB, the HamiltonBuhl SchoolMate, the Learning Headphones LH-55, and the ThinkWrite TW110 and TW210. We tested their maximum volume the same way we do for our guide to the best kids headphones (for more details, read about our testing methodology). For us to consider a set of headphones to be reasonably safe for an hour of continuous listening per day, it must be limited to a maximum output of 85 dBA when playing pink noise. We’re forgiving of headphones that top out as high as 88 dBA in our tests because headphone measurements are inherently imprecise, as are any measurements that involve noise.

Our testing showed that all of the school headphones produced much louder sound than we’d want our kids to listen to for long. You can see the full results in the chart below. Volume levels in the low 90s to low 100s are what we expect to see when measuring headphones that have no volume limiting. Three of our tested school-headphone pairs could top 100 decibels, a level that can damage hearing in just 15 minutes. If we were testing these pairs for our guide to kids headphones, we’d consider their volume levels unacceptable and dismiss them.

Okay, they’re loud. Does it really matter?

How troublesome are these loud volume levels in a school environment? When we evaluate kids headphones for our guide, we assume that the headphones will be used for entertainment—music, movies, and games, the sorts of things kids would probably want to listen to at louder levels. But the types of media that kids listen to at school can be quite different. A lot of educational programming consists of speech—for example, a remote teacher lecture or a tutorial video—and perhaps the occasional short-form video or learning game with a musical score. Although few humans can resist turning up the volume when jamming to their favorite tunes, how many want to crank it to 11 when a science teacher is explaining the life cycle of honeybees? (Even the most avid apiarists probably don’t listen to spoken-word content that loudly.)

The type of media that a student engages with during the educational day and the amount of time they spend doing so both depend on a child’s age, grade, and school. We spoke to a dozen parents from around the country with kids in grades from kindergarten to high school, and not a single one of their kids reported that they were engaging with more than an hour or so of videos, music, or games via headphones while in class. Most kids stated that they used their school headphones less than twice a week.

Also, the majority of the kids we spoke with who used headphones provided by their school told us they weren’t allowed to take the headphones home. Because of this, and the rarity of loud sounds in educational programming, we’ve concluded that non-volume-limited headphones purchased by schools likely pose little risk for most students with healthy ears.

Better safe than sorry

If you’re at all worried about how much noise exposure your child might be getting from school headphones, here’s what we recommend. Ask your child (or their teachers) how much time students spend with headphones on during the school day. If your child is regularly using headphones, you may want to provide them with a volume-limiting pair, if your school allows you to send in your own. A pair that can work both wired and wirelessly is best, as it can connect easily to almost any device.

Consider talking to the teacher or the school’s IT lead about setting volume limits on the school’s devices (we detail how to do that in our article about noise-induced hearing loss in kids). Another option is to engage with the PTA or school board to encourage those with purchasing power to order headphones with volume limits when they next replace educational technology, or to see if the school is willing to accept donations or organize a fundraiser.

And as always, teach and practice healthy listening habits. Kids who use headphones on the bus, during sports practice, and at home after school are far more at risk than the kids who use non-volume-limited headphones only for a 30-minute computer class at school. Limit noise exposure at home by following some of our safety tips, such as setting volume limits on devices or providing hearing protection at loud events.

Talk to your child about their listening habits in the same way you would discuss any other health concern. Sure, they may occasionally (or regularly) need reminders in the same way you have to pester them about eating healthy foods or wearing a mouth guard at hockey practice. But as Dave Grohl, Chris Martin, and many other musicians with hearing loss can attest, hearing-health care is a lesson worth learning early.

This article was edited by Adrienne Maxwell and Grant Clauser.