Are your child's headphones damaging their hearing?

We’re obviously all very aware of protecting our children from viewing inappropriate content online, but fewer of us will have thought about the damage being caused to our children’s hearing by the volume of the content they’re viewing.

Children today have a world of audio and video content served up to them via computers, tablets, consoles and phones, and they’ll often use devices like headphones, earphones and earbuds – collectively called ‘hearables’ – to listen to this content. But until now it hasn’t been possible for parents to know how loud, or for how long, their children have been listening. This obviously creates the potential for permanent hearing damage.

The World Health Organisation and the International Telecommunications Union have joined forces to produce hearing safety standard recommendations for hearables, which enable parents to set and control volume levels on compliant devices.

These enable you to set levels and time limits for sound exposure on individual hearable devices, regardless of the source of audio the devices are connected to. The volume of audio through each hearable will automatically keep the sound exposure to below recommended limits, ultimately cutting the volume altogether when the maximum time allowance is reached.

These new recommendations are being accompanied by a global “Make Listening Safe” campaign and product compliance logos will make it easier to spot which hearables are compliant with the new recommendations. That’s great news for our children’s hearing health, helping to ensure that they can continue to safely listen to the content they love for many years to come.