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As the nationwide debate over masking continues—Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced today that the state’s school mask mandate would expire February 28, while northern Virginia parents fight to keep masks on—it’s worth reading this piece that many of our readers have been discussing on Twitter. It’s by Melody Schreiber, a science and health writer who’s been covering Covid-19 for The New Republic since January 2020, and it pushes against a very common claim circulating right now: that masks are hurting children’s development. 

 

In fact, Melody writes, “I talked to several speech therapists, developmental psychologists, and pediatricians, and no one has seen evidence for delayed or changed development in children because of masks.” Some of these experts have even found evidence that actively refutes the claim: One study showed kids are just as good at determining the emotion a masked person in a picture is displaying as they are determining the emotion of someone wearing sunglasses. And in real life, with body language to use as well, they’re probably even better at it. There’s no evidence masks are inhibiting speech development, either: “Perhaps most fascinating of all, a study on preschoolers found that they made more complex speech sounds when wearing masks.”

 

One thing I find interesting about this piece is that Melody expected to write something much more neutral. As Melody tweeted after the piece was published, “I set out on this piece eager to talk about any documented harms and how we might balance them against benefits. I was, to be honest, shocked that there’s no evidence of harm, because I’ve read article after article saying so.”

Many of these articles do point to evidence that masks can muffle speech sounds, which anyone could tell you anecdotally. But they then infer that masking must damage children’s development—which is actually quite a stretch, Melody points out, “because the majority of language development usually happens before the age of two, and masks are not recommended for children under that age.” Furthermore, “face coverings are common in societies around the world, even when there’s not a pandemic—for reasons ranging from faith to air pollution—and children don’t suffer from delays because of it.”

 

Read Melody’s piece for a full review of the evidence in favor of masking. Masks seem to help keep schools open, for instance, which is really important: Remote learning and school closures do seem to hurt kids, in ways that masking doesn’t, as far as researchers can tell. 

 

Melody’s also very open about the dissonance of adults dining in restaurants while kids mask up (“Children should not bear disproportionate burdens,” she writes) and points to the need for data-driven markers to determine when unmasking is appropriate. (On that note: Did you know only 22 percent of 5- to 11-year-olds nationwide have been fully vaccinated? I didn’t, and now I can’t get it out of my head when reading stories about dropping school mask mandates.) Melody’s also sympathetic to parents frustrated by the pandemic’s constant twists and turns. “As the mom of a kid who has spent about half his life in a pandemic, I have wondered a lot about how wearing a mask affects child development,” she tweeted on Monday. 

 

But ultimately, she writes, we may be lashing out at the wrong target: “While masks are a symbol of how the pandemic has changed our lives, they’re not the cause.” 

 

There are good reasons to want to get back to normal. “Think of the children” anti-masking campaigns may not be the best way to go about that.

 

—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor

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