If you can’t hear what your kids are listening to, all is good, right? Wrong. Turns out that more kids are damaging their hearing that any time in human history and it’s those earbuds and headphones turned up too loud. Solution: Puro Sound’s terrific PuroQuiet Kids Headphones. Here’s my review…
The outdated parenting adage of children being seen but not heard has taken on a darker overtone with the rise of personal entertainment devices. Kids as young as 2yo are now glued to their phones or tablets, watching cartoons, movies or YouTube pratfall videos. But they’re not just watching, they’re listening too, and almost always it’s with earbuds or kid-size headphones. Which means they can turn it up as loud as they want – even to the point of damaging their hearing – without the parents ever knowing.
The stats are alarming: One research study in The Netherlands found in a study of 3316 children with normal middle-ear function and frequent use of earbuds or headphones that 14.2% of them tested positive for high-frequency hearing loss. Generally speaking, research shows that about 13 to 18 percent of children and teens had signs of NIHL (noise induced hearing loss).
What’s crazy is that the solution is pretty simple: Limit the maximum volume of their listening devices. How loud? Well, standard workplace safety measures suggest that a maximum of 85 decibels for 8 hours is the maximum for noise. How loud is that? Well, a normal conversation is 60-70 decibels, a typical movie theater is 74-104 decibels, emergency sirens are 110-129 decibels and a fireworks show can be up to 160 decibels. The math is easy: The louder the sound, the less time you — or your child! — should be exposed to it.
So there are a bunch of companies that offer “volume limiting” headphones or earbuds for children. The New York Times reports that when tested, however, almost half of them don’t actually limit volume. The winner of their test was from Puro Sound Labs and it’s the very latest of their kids headphones that I reviewed, the PuroQuiet volume limiting headphones with active noise cancellation.
That’s a lot of intro to a review, I realize, but this really is pretty important for us parents to help protect our children’s hearing, and when the solution is actually sleek, well designed and includes ANC? A win:win. Check out my video review of the PuroQuiet:
What you want to also know is that I’m giving away a pair of these PuroQuiet headphones to some lucky YouTube viewer – and 5 of the IEM200 headphones for the runners ups, courtesy of Puro Sound Labs!! Not only are these great headphones for your kids with excellent sound, but they really do limit volume to protect their hearing and the active noise cancelling ANC works surprisingly well too. They’re great for commutes – plane, trains and automobiles – and even better for children that are easily overwhelmed by the noise of our daily world.
Either way, however, please do pay attention to the volume of the content your children are digesting, whether they’re 5yo or 15yo. An ounce of audio prevention now will mean a lifetime of enjoying sound, music, conversations and everything else for your children.
Disclosure: Puro Sound Labs sent us a pair of PuroQuiet headphones for the purposes of this review, and they’re supplying all our giveaway headphones too. Thanks, Puro!
