The best headphones for kids

This is not surprising, as more and more schools are using Desktops and laptops as part of the curriculum, and teachers want students to be able to hear lessons and work on projects without disturbing each other. Still, it’s telling that headphones are in, and binder paper is largely out. But after volunteering in my kids’ classrooms over the past three years, I can tell you that when it comes to children, not all headphones are created equal. The best headphones for adults are rarely the best models for kids, for a number of reasons:

Earbuds and in-ear headphones are likely the most popular types of headphones, but they aren't always the best for kids. For starters, in-ear models often don’t fit kids’ smaller ears. And even if you can find in-ear headphones specifically designed for a child, they can be difficult to put in and take out, and they can hamper your son or daughter’s ability to hear teachers or classroom volunteers. In-ear headphones and earbuds also come with some degree of “ick” factor—they sit inside your ears, after all—and these models tend to get even nastier when used by kids who aren't as careful as adults at keeping the things clean:

Combine the usual ear detritus with dirty floors and desks, and you get earbuds that no one wants to handle. Finally, I’ve seen too many earbuds and in-ear headphones get crushed under little feet when they've fallen on the floor, or been wedged between heavy books in backpacks. For these reasons, I generally recommend on- or over-ear headphones, which are easy to put on and take off, and often more durable. However, you’ll find that very few standard models fit younger children well, even at the smallest setting. Kids’ heads are smaller than ours, so they need headphones designed for smaller noggins.

In a perfect world, any decent set of headphones would be sturdy enough to withstand a few drops, some cable bends and strain, and the occasional yank-them-out-of-a-backpack headband bending. But we live in the real world: Raise your hand if you've ever had a set of headphones break or a cable fail, even though you thought you treated the headphones well.

Children tend to be even rougher on their gear than adults, and their headphones are often lugged around in backpacks filled with books and other can-crushing items, so kids headphones need to be designed with kid-level abuse in mind. Hearing damage from loud volume levels is a risk for anyone listening to headphones, but children are especially susceptible, as they’re less aware of the dangers and, in my experience, more willing to put up with too-loud audio rather than turning it down. Specifically, the CDC recommends avoiding extended exposure to volume levels above 85dB. You can use iOS’s volume-limit feature to cap the maximum audio output of an iPhone or iPad, but that feature isn't available on Macs, and if your child is using a device you don’t manage, it may not have the volume limit set.

It also doesn't account for the varying sensitivity of individual headphones—the optimum volume-level setting for one set of headphones might produce volume that’s too loud on another set, and not loud enough on another. And, of course, kids are resourceful, and eventually they’ll figure out how to get around this setting. A better solution is a set of kid-focused headphones that includes circuitry to limit output volume to 85dB, no matter how high the volume is cranked up on the source. While testing headphones for this review, I used an Ear3 meter to measure actual volume levels at the ear. (The Ear3 measures loudness in dBA—A-weighted decibels—which refers to a method of measuring noise levels that approximates the loudness perceived by the human ear.)

Volume-limited headphones do have a couple drawbacks. First, the volume-limiting circuitry usually affects sound quality noticeably. Specifically, treble can sound muffled, bass is sometimes emphasized, and midrange is just a bit off. The second is that in some noisy environments, such as a car, train, or plane, volume-limited headphones may be unusable—your kids won’t be able to hear the headphone audio because of background noise. 

The solution, however, isn’t to use non-limited headphones, which will subject your kids’ ears to potentially damaging sound levels when turned up loud enough to be audible in these environments. Rather, it’s to make the environment quieter, or to use headphones that block external noise or include active noise-canceling circuitry.