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Some Children's Headphones Raise Concerns of Hearing Loss, Report Says (go.com)
Some headphones marketed for children may not restrict enough noise for young ears. From a report on ABC: The Wirecutter, a technology products review website (owned by the New York Times), tried out 30 different children's headphones for style, fit and safety by using both a plastic model ear and a few real children. "There's no governing board that oversees this," Lauren Dragan, the Headphone Editor at The Wirecutter, told "Good Morning America" in an interview that aired today. Dragan added that the headphones for children all claim to limit volume to around 85 decibels. Sound below the 85 decibel mark for a maximum of eight hours is considered safe, according to the World Health Organization. The Wirecutter report found that some of these headphones emit sound higher than the 85 decibel mark. The full report here.
When I was a kid back in late 80's early 90's, I was constantly listening to Megadeth on my Walkman with the volume cranked up all the way. I paid the price for that. Now in my adult life people get frustrated when I can't hear them. I can easily trace the decline in my hearing back to my Walkman days. As near as I can tell, no one at the time thought it was serious matter at all.
I still listen to Megadeth though.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
aren't they out playing or something?
You're at least 20 years too late for that. Playing outside is too dangerous for our modern youngsters. Now we can just VR playing outside from the safety of our padded rooms.
I think there were only a handful of my late-teen/early-twenty years where I was in danger of playing my music beyond the pain threshold. Most people (even most kids) are smart enough for the "If it hurts, stop it," rule.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Buy some noise cancelling earphones. You can tell people over and over again about hearing loss but it won't matter if they can't hear that music over background noise of the noisy bus they are on.
Noise cancelling / closed cup earphones will just make you naturally turn down the volume.
What?
Exactly when and how young are people planting headphones on kids?
Most of these manufacturers have products targeted for kids as young as 2-3 years.
In my day parents had to listen to repetitive ear-worm songs from Barney, Raffi, etc. But now you can slap some headphones on the baby and avoid the horrible nightmare of children's music.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
> I think there were only a handful of my late-teen/early-twenty years where I was in danger of playing my music beyond the pain threshold. Most people (even most kids) are smart enough for the "If it hurts, stop it," rule.
Hearing damage occurs from prolonged exposure to sounds over 85db. Pain starts at about 120db. So your hearing is damaged long before it's painful.
Decibels are a logarithmic scale, 120db (pain) is over 3,000 times as much power as 85db (damage). It takes 3,000X times as many watts to cause pain as it does to cause long term damage.
using headphones and playing outside are not mutually exclusive.
You just got wooshed. I'm surprised you didn't hear it.
Yes, yes I did.
Headphones are perfectly fine, as long as you either get ones that isolate outside noise, or only listen in already quiet areas. Trying to block outside noise by turning up your music is what damages hearing.
Eat the rich.
There was a lawsuit against Apple for the original iPod for a similar reason. Steve Jobs was mostly deaf, so insisted that he be able to hear the sound, so the maximum volume was loud enough to be dangerous. Airline in-flight entertainment systems are the worst: they give you crappy headphones so that you have to turn the volume to max to hear anything if you use them, but if you buy a decent set of noise-cancelling ones then you want the volume down at around 20-40%. This is all fine, until they do an announcement, when they pause the movie and slam the volume up to 100% with no warning.
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