What Do Masks Do to Kids?

Face masks keep kids safe from Covid-19 and keep schools open. There’s no evidence they harm kids developmentally.

What are masks doing to our children? In recent months, as frustration with the ongoing pandemic increases, this question has felt particularly relevant.

Everyone from hematologists and veterinarians to New York Times
columnists have pointed to children’s development when suggesting that it’s time to drop the precautions of the early phases of the pandemic. The frustration is understandable: After all, parents and children were promised a mask-free existence once they got the shots. Can you blame them for asking when this bargain will be kept?

Many calling for an end to mask mandates point to vague “downsides” and “harms” from masking children. “Masks can interfere with young children’s brain development,” one recent article stated, citing no studies whose findings actually showed this. Others say masks cause “disruption to their social and emotional learning, to literacy and speech,” again with no studies or evidence. Even a piece titled “The downsides of masking young children are real” failed to offer research showing actual documented downsides. What these articles cite, if anything, is studies showing that masks sometimes muffle speech and make it slightly harder to judge emotion from facial expressions alone. The articles then infer that, given these findings, there must be some kind of damage to children’s development...

https://newrepublic.com/article/165306/face-masks-dont-harm-kids-development