Do masks really harm kids? Here's what the science says.

As more states drop mask mandates, experts explain why keeping them on in schools is still a smart move for families and teachers.

“But we do have this human experiment that’s been going on with kids wearing masks at school, and we know that we haven’t seen those fears of health risks realized,” says Theresa Guilbert, a pediatric pulmonologist who is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine.

She and other experts say most evidence suggests that masking doesn’t harm children—and that it benefits them in more ways than one. Not only do masks protect kids from COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases, but studies show that schools with mask policies in place are more likely to stay open, which decades of research show is particularly critical for kids’ mental health and development.

Here’s what the science says about kids and masks.

How masks affect breathing

One of the earliest concerns that parents had about kids wearing masks all day was how it might affect their breathing—whether masks would allow them to get enough oxygen or trap in too much carbon dioxide. Guilbert says this was raised as a concern for kids since they breathe more rapidly than adults.

But there’s no evidence that masking significantly impairs breathing. In fact, one study showing unacceptable levels of carbon dioxide in kids ages six to 17 who wore masks was widely discredited last summer—and ultimately retracted by the journal JAMA Pediatrics—because of concerns over the accuracy of its measurements and validity of its conclusions.

Instead, Guilbert points to a meta-analysis of 10 studies, showing that the fluctuation of carbon dioxide and oxygen levels among adults and children wearing masks was “well within normal range.”..

...But Walter Gilliam, a child psychiatry and psychology professor at the Yale Child Study Center, says this study and others like it are limited by their reliance on still photographs. “I’m more than just my eyeballs,” he says. Children also pick up on cues like how people walk through spaces, the tone of their voices, and the hand gestures they make. “All of that is stripped away from those studies.” He points to another study showing that children have no more difficulty reading the emotions of a person wearing a face mask than they do a person wearing sunglasses...

...Gilliam says blaming masks for the depression and anxiety in kids stems from a natural desire to protect them. But he suspects it’s not the masking that causes stress in classrooms. “It’s the trauma of COVID that the masks were intended to prevent,” he says. “When you have an ache and a pain, it’s the cut on your arm not the Band-Aid that went over it that’s causing the problem. The purpose of the mask is to reduce all the other traumas—traumas that we know for an absolute fact harm children.”..

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/do-masks-really-harm-kids-heres-what-the-science-says