It’s time to start paying attention to noisy games and gadgets and what they can do to young ears.

Much of the recent publicity about the dangerous lead content in toys has raised legitimate concerns. At the same time, however, it has completely ignored another threat that occurs in toys you may think are completely safe: noise.

The loud level of sound on many toys and games is not only dangerous, but it has significant implications for the future of children. This holiday season, kids as young as age 3 are reported to be asking for adult iPods, or for toys that either produce loud sound, or are music producing and plug into the ear. Last year, when the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) randomly tested personal listening devices–some of which were MP3’s for young children–it found that the sound capacity for each was well beyond the maximum safe upper limit of 85 decibels. In fact, the devices for kids had higher sound capacities than those that were for adults.

Hearing damage from loud noise is irreversible and it is a real problem. A recent poll done by ASHA found that more than half of high school students report at least one symptom of hearing loss. In the young, such a loss can severely hamper their social and educational development. To get information from the experts in the field to you and your kids, ASHA created www.listentoyourbuds.org. It is a helpful tool that’s part of America Tuned In Today… But Tuned Out Tomorrow. It gives a visual depiction of what happens when hearing loss occurs,.

But let’s make this easy. You don’t need a calibration tool to know if the noise level could be damaging. If a child is listening to an MP3 player and Mom and Dad can hear everything distinctly from about 3 feet away, the volume is set too loud! It is a problem that many toys on the market today do not have sound level indicators. However, in most cases, if you set the sound level on a personal listening device at half, chances are you will be within the 85 decibel range.

Another tip: it is a good idea to upgrade the headphones on your child’s player so that it blocks out unwanted ambient sound. That will reduce the chances that they will turn up the volume in order to drown out unwanted sound.

Hearing loss from sound is not just a function of sound levels. It is also a function of proximity to the levels and the length of exposure to them. But in that regard, some of the indicators aren’t very promising either. When the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) polled the nation on its usage habits last year, it found that adults and high schools students were listening at high levels for long periods of time. There is little reason to think that the very young aren’t following suit. One tip here is to encourage your child now to give their ears a “break” hourly, before they fall into the habit of listening for hours on end.

By learning how to protect children from the potential risk of hearing loss from today’s technology, parents may not have to worry about such poll findings in the future.

Joseph Cerquone is the Public Relations Director of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association You can find more tips and resources for parents,educators and kids at www.listentoyourbuds.org.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 1:30 pm and is filed under education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.