Photo credit: Pixabay
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
The Stanford Medicine Children’s Health blog, Healthier, Happy Lives, recently discussed preventing hearing loss in children on the occasion of World Hearing Day. World Hearing Day is on March 3 and is sponsored by the World Health Organization. The blog post includes tips for parents, including modeling safe listening for children and warnings about signs of hearing loss in children. Last month, WHO and another important United Nations agency, the International Telecommunications Union, issued guidelines for safer ways to play video games and esports.
Children don’t know that noise is bad for them, so it’s up to their parents, grandparents, teachers and other important adults in their lives to protect their auditory health and teach them about the dangers of noise. In 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement about noise and children.
Excessive noise exposure is common in everyday life in industrialized societies. Ubiquitous use of personal listening devices starting in children as young as 3 and continuing into young adulthood poses additional auditory health dangers for children. The blog post notes that 15% of children have noise-induced hearing loss. More bothersome is a report from Belgium about tinnitus (ringing in the ears) in high school juniors. About 90% of people with tinnitus also have hearing loss, meaning that about 80% of Belgian high school juniors also have hearing loss. When today’s young people reach mid-life, at the peak of family and work responsibilities, they may be as hearing-impaired as today’s old people.
Preventing noise-induced hearing loss is simple and inexpensive. If it sounds loud, it’s too loud and the listener’s auditory health is at risk. Parents and grandparents need to avoid taking their little dears to noisy places. If that’s not possible, guardians should insist that children use hearing protection, which for younger children means earmuff-style hearing protection and not earplugs. The National Institute for Deafness and other Communication Disorders offers good advice about this.
Please protect children’s ears from excessive noise exposure. That way, their ears should last them a lifetime.
