Noise-Induced Hearing Loss in Kids Is a Growing Problem. Here’s How to Protect Little Ears.

If you’re like us, when you first see the phrase “noise-induced hearing damage,” you probably imagine a loud blast of sound physically damaging the eardrum. And yes, that is one way hearing loss can happen—in an explosion, for example. However, that isn’t the way the majority of people damage their hearing. Rather, most noise-induced hearing loss is due to the cumulative effects of excessive noise exposure, listening to fairly loud noise over a longer period of time. (People encounter “fairly loud noise” more frequently than you might think, but more on that in a minute.)

If you were paying attention in biology class, you may recall that sound waves enter the ear and vibrate the eardrum, which in turn moves the middle-ear bones (malleus, incus, and stapes) and causes the fluid and tiny hairs inside the cochlea (inner ear) to move. Those hairs stimulate nerve cells that send a signal to your brain, which it interprets as sound.

Human ears weren’t made to handle excessively loud sounds most of the time, explains Brian Fligor, ScD, chair of the World Health Organization’s Make Listening Safe Taskforce, author of Understanding Childhood Hearing Loss, and clinical strategic advisor of Lantos Technologies, a company that helps develop better custom molds for clinical hearing devices. Human ancestors had to listen for tiny sounds—a crack of a branch in the woods, for example, or a bird call, indicators of prey they wanted to eat or predators that wanted to eat them. It was rare to encounter anything loud enough to damage the ears, namely around 110 dBA (A-weighted decibels) or more. Maybe being too close to a lightning strike or a volcanic eruption would do it, but that would probably damage a lot more than just a person’s hearing.

But in today’s post-industrial society, people are regularly exposed to those kinds of loud sounds, from motorcycles, chainsaws, concerts, and—yes—headphones. And that’s where the modern problem comes in. When the tiny hairs of the inner ear trigger the nerve cells to fire, those cells create a waste product; as Fligor explains, it's somewhat similar to your leg muscles building up lactic acid after a very long run. If the noise is quiet, not much waste is produced. If it’s loud but short, the cells get a chance to rest and clear out the waste. But listen loud enough and long enough, and the cells can’t clean out the waste quickly enough—and eventually the waste kills cells. This is why noise duration matters. Noise exposure is a lot like sun exposure: Long enough, and bright enough, and you’ll burn.

Even if you or your child doesn’t show signs of damage now, noise exposure could catch up with you later in life. A study published in 2017 by the CDC states that “[h]earing loss is the third most common chronic physical condition in the United States and is twice as prevalent as diabetes or cancer.” In fact, “one in five ... persons aged 20–29 years” had “audiometric notches,” or sections of their hearing frequency range that were damaged or missing. Additionally, “[d]amage to hearing accumulates over time so that hazardous exposure that begins earlier in life has the potential to be more damaging as persons age.”

You might have damage already and not even know it yet, as the study states: “Persons with auditory damage caused by noise frequently do not recognize it; one in four U.S. adults who reported excellent or good hearing had an audiometric notch.”

So, how loud is loud, and how long is long? Generally speaking, 70 dBA, about the volume of a washing machine or dishwasher, is a safe level for any duration of time. But when you play some music at that level, it can seem to lack clarity, and the louder and quieter parts of a song seem about the same. So people tend to pump up the volume.

Organizations such as NIOSH and OSHA have set occupational guidelines that recommend limiting overall sound exposure to 85 to 90 dBA over eight hours. But those recommendations focus on the workplace and don’t paint a complete picture of the complexities of everyday noise exposure. Limiting levels to 85 dBA does not mean, in itself, that the listener will be safe.

As with damage done to your skin, damage done to your hearing is most often due to prolonged and continuous exposure to noise over 70 dBA. If you or your child is exposed to any environmental noise louder than 70 dBA during the day—say, traffic noise, construction by your house, airplane engines, loud sounds at school (which the CDC says is a concern)—the amount of safe listening time you have left is reduced. Over enough time, even a recommended limit of 85 dBA can be problematic.

Further complicating matters is that some people are more susceptible to hearing loss than others, and it is partly genetic. To continue the sun-exposure analogy, some people burn, others tan. Some burn quickly, others do only after a long exposure. The same applies to sound damage, as some people can metabolize faster and may not experience as much damage from the same loud exposure as other people.

But no tests exist for this tendency, and therefore no one can predict who will be susceptible and who will not. So the World Health Organization suggests proceeding as though you or your loved ones are predisposed, and it builds upon the OSHA and NIOSH guidelines, recommending that the equivalent continuous sound level (or L_eq) should be kept below 70 dBA for music played through headphones or limited to one hour at 85 dBA. And music exposure should never exceed 110 dBA (PDF).

Caregivers can’t chase kids around all day with a decibel meter and constantly check the volume settings on every device. Nor can they control all the sounds that kids are exposed to. So the best plan of action is to keep a couple of valuable tools on hand—namely, hearing protection for louder situations and headphones that limit the maximum volume and/or cut down on external noise. It’s not a perfect fix, but like the foam bumpers on coffee-table corners and “childproof” latches on drawers, these tools provide an extra level of protection that can reduce a child’s risk of injury.

Keep hearing protection on hand

Sometimes, life gets loud, be it a concert, a monster-truck rally, or an amusement park. If you have or care for young children, we recommend keeping a set of hearing protectors in your diaper bag or backpack. If you have an Apple Watch, you can enable noise exposure tracking, which can alert you when sounds get to unsafe levels and it’s time to pull out the earmuffs.

For tweens and teens, a pair of concert earplugs is subtle, surprisingly cool looking, and easy to attach to a keychain. Fortunately, hearing protection is regulated, so any set that has an appropriate noise reduction rating (or NRR) and fits snugly should be helpful in reducing the risk. Generally speaking, the louder the noise and the longer the exposure, the higher the NRR you should have.

Use volume-limiting headphones for younger children

A 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that children ages 8 to 18 devote an average of seven-plus hours daily to the use of entertainment media. That’s equivalent to the time spent at a full-time job—and if they’re listening in excess of recommended volume levels and have exposure to more noise throughout their day, that could mean potential trouble.

A 2016 study of 9-year-old children in Sweden concluded that increases in hearing damage could be interpreted as being related to headphone use, and another study found that loud music, clubs, and other forms of “leisure noise” are common causes of noise-induced hearing loss, tinnitus, and hyperacusis.

When you’re buying headphones for younger children, we recommend getting a pair that effectively limits the maximum volume to 85 dB as a helpful preventive measure. Unfortunately, unlike with hearing protectors, there is absolutely no regulation of these devices. As part of our testing for our guide to the best kids headphones, we set out to determine which, if any, of the headphones marketed for kids were actually safer to use. Immediately we found a problem: Nearly one-third of the kids headphones in our original test group exceeded safer volume levels. You can see some examples in the chart below.

We mostly encountered this problem with passive, wired headphones. Active headphones (in other words, internally powered ones) such as our favorite pair of kids headphones, the Puro BT2200-Plus, can employ a digital limiter that stops the sound from playing any higher than a certain volume level. We measure the volume limiting on every pair of kids headphones we test and keep a detailed database of the results, so if you’re wondering about a certain pair, be sure to check our list (Google Sheets).

Of course, a volume-limiting circuit alone doesn’t make for safe headphone listening. It’s up to adults to monitor and limit a child’s overall noise exposure through headphones. As we discuss above, the general consensus among experts is that an environmental noise level of 85 dBA is considered reasonably safe for only an hour of listening, so it’s important for your child to take listening breaks if they tend to listen at the maximum allowed volume.

Use noise-cancelling headphones for kids who travel and for tweens or teens

Although listening at lower volumes is ideal, it’s impossible to do so if the noises around you drown out the sound of your child’s headphones. One of the biggest complaints we hear about volume-limiting headphones is that 85 dB isn’t loud enough for use on an airplane. The noise levels in a typical plane can vary significantly. During takeoff and landing, noise levels inside the cabin can reach 105 dB. At cruising altitudes, the loudness sits around 85 dB, but older aircraft and certain areas of the plane, such as the back, can be even louder.

Some headphone companies have tried to address the problem by adding a higher “airplane” or “travel” setting that raises volume limits to around 92 dB, but to us that negates the safety feature that is most important in headphones for children. As you can see in the graph above, 90 dB is equivalent in loudness to a lawn mower—not exactly something you’d want to sit your child next to for hours on end.

The best way to counter this is to buy headphones that also reduce background noise, either through passive noise isolation (physically blocking the sound, in the way earplugs work) or active noise cancellation. Unfortunately, only a handful of the headphones we tested for our kids headphones guide provided notably effective passive isolation; specifically, they weren’t great at blocking out sound in the audio spectrum (50 Hz to 2 kHz) that’s typically loudest in the backseat of a car or plane, where we expect kids headphones might get a lot of use.

This is why we recommend active-noise-cancelling headphones like the PuroQuiet-Plus pair for children who are frequent travellers on airplanes, subways, and the like. Active noise cancellation helps to bring down the loudness of the airplane hum so that safer, more moderate volume levels are sufficient.

Noise-cancelling headphones are also a good choice for tweens and teens who have moved beyond kids headphones, know how to work around kids headphones’ volume-limiting technology, and tend to turn up the volume to tune out … well … everything. Lowering the level of external sounds may at least partially encourage them to listen at lower volume levels.

Make their devices safer, too

As with all things related to raising a kid, the bottom line is this: Supervision adds to safety. But it’s challenging, what with the millions of other things to worry about. So here are a few additional steps you can take to protect your kids when you aren’t right next to them.

Set volume limits on their mobile devices. Although you can’t control every device your child uses (which is why volume-limiting headphones are useful), you can reduce the sound output on their mobile device.

Here’s how to do that on an Apple iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 14 or higher:

1. Go to Settings. Tap Sounds & Haptics.
2. Next, tap Headphone Safety. You’ll see the option to receive headphones notifications, which will pop up a reminder if someone is listening too loudly for too long, as well as reduce the volume if a person’s seven-day loudness exposure limit is reached. Once you enable this feature, a calendar appears. This calendar tracks how many times the device has hit its exposure limit. It’s a great way to check in on listening habits.
3. Under the calendar is an option to reduce loud audio. Enable that, and you can move a slider down to a safe volume. Just be aware that this setting isn’t a failsafe; wireless devices that aren’t Apple-compatible can still go above that level if their volume settings are independent. Note too that a low dB setting in addition to a volume-limiting pair of kids headphones may make the headphones too quiet. You may need to make a few adjustments specific to your devices before setting the password lock.

Next you need to make sure that your tech-savvy kid won’t be able to change the limits back. So you need to password-protect the Settings menu.

4. In the Settings menu, tap Screen Time, then Content & Privacy Restrictions.
5. Tap the button to enable Content & Privacy Restrictions.
6. Now scroll all the way down to near the bottom where it says Reduce Loud Sounds, and tap. Select Don’t Allow, and then tap Back at the top left.
7. Finally, you need to set a password to protect these settings. Go back to the Screen Time menu, and you’ll see Lock Screen Time Settings in blue near the bottom. Tap it. Set a passcode, ideally one that’s different from the one you use for the device’s lock screen. (Don’t forget this code! Maybe save it in a password manager.)

iPads don’t offer the complete suite of headphone safety tools, but you can limit the maximum headphone audio volume (in iOS 14 or higher) by enabling Reduce loud sounds in the Sounds settings menu and selecting your desired decibel limit. On older iPads, you can only set a general volume limit in the Music app through the Music settings menu.

Here’s how to do it on Samsung devices:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Sounds and vibration and then Volume.
3. Tap the three dots located at the top-right corner and then tap Media volume limit.
4. Toggle the switch on and set the maximum volume level using the slider. The WHO recommends roughly 60% volume for 60 minutes as a guideline for media consumption with headphones. If your child will be using standard, non-volume-reducing headphones, pull this slider down to about 60%. (If it turns orange, you’re getting into the less-safe zone.)
5. To prevent little fingers from fussing with the setting, toggle on Set volume limit PIN. Just be sure to record the PIN somewhere so that you don’t have to do a firmware reset if you forget it.

Other Android mobile devices are a little dicier, as the exact path through the settings varies based on the manufacturer. Although Google announced a feature called headphone loud sound alert (video) at the Google I/O 2023 conference, that update has yet to reach Android in the US. Parental controls in Google Family Link used to lock volume settings on some devices, but we have found that feature to be hit-and-miss on newer devices.

We found many third-party apps in the Google Play store that claim to limit volume. One that we tested and particularly liked is Volume Lock Pro. This app allows you to choose separate volume settings for calls, ringtones, alerts, and media. You can choose an acceptable range or set one level and lock the volume buttons altogether, protecting those settings with a separate four-digit password. We set our range between zero and 60% for media. The only downside is that the app doesn’t yet distinguish between headphone and internal-speaker use, so your kids may be annoyed if they like to play sound through the device’s speakers at full blast.

Be sure to monitor usage. As we discussed earlier, it’s not just the volume but also the duration of noise exposure that matters. Even when a child is listening at safer volume levels, that time can add up quickly. Consider that music isn’t the only stuff kids have on their devices. Movies, TV shows, YouTube—if the volume veers even 5 decibels over the recommended 85 dB limit to 90 dB, the WHO’s suggested total daily listening time drops to 2 hours 30 minutes.

Fortunately, you have a lot of parental controls that can track the time your child spends on a device. Whether you use built-in controls such as those on the Kindle Fire Kids Edition, Apple Screen Time, or Google Family Link, or a monitoring device or service like Circle or Kidslox, a time limit is a great way to give your kid’s ears a break. If you want to learn more about the capabilities of these systems, Wirecutter has a guide to apps that manage your kid’s phone usage. Of course, for little ones at home, you can go old-school and just set a timer.

Whatever methods you choose, the one-two punch of limiting volume and setting time limits for headphone use can reduce the risk of noise-induced hearing loss and the chronic problems it can create down the road.