Opinion: Stop Telling Kids To Wear Masks

Those least physically impacted by the coronavirus might end up being the ones who are most psychologically impacted. 

Several states across the country, including California and New York, are lifting mask mandates for vaccinated individuals, but their indoor school mask mandates for students are set to remain in place, regardless of their vaccination status.

School mask mandates are harmful to children. Requiring a child to wear a mask at this stage in the pandemic, when virtually all healthy adults are able to get a vaccine to protect themselves against the virus, is wrong. While many officials continue to push the “trust the science” narrative, many of them are refusing to acknowledge the “science” behind the risk of children contracting COVID-19. 

As reported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Since the start of the pandemic, more than 3.63 million children have tested positive, making up about 13.6% of all cases.” Of those cases, “About 0.01% of children diagnosed with COVID-19 have died [and] [r]oughly 0.8% of children with COVID-19 have been hospitalized.”

According to the CDC “Older adults are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19. …The risk increases for people in their 50s and increases in 60s, 70s, and 80s. People 85 and older are the most likely to get very sick.”

The argument for forcing young children to cover their faces for hours during the day used to be that, even if it was unlikely they would contract extreme symptoms from COVID-19, they might pass it to an at-risk adult. This argument does not hold water anymore, as adults are able to be vaccinated if they wish to protect themselves. If they do not want to get the vaccine, the decision to put themselves at risk is theirs to make. Children should no longer be responsible for the health of adults if adults are able to protect themselves.

A Psychology Today article written by Dr. Vanessa LoBue Ph.D., details the ways in which children look to the facial expressions of adults around them to gauge a situation.

Lobue wrote, “Children, and especially babies, sometimes look to a parent’s face as a clue about what to do when a situation is uncertain — what scientists call ‘social referencing.’ For example, babies avoid playing with a new toy if they see an adult react fearfully toward it (Mumme & Fernald, 2003; Mumme, Fernald, & Herrera, 1996).”

Lobue, however, goes on to describe the ways that children can still figure out emotional expressions of people while they are wearing masks, noting that a recent study showed that “children were able to accurately identify the emotions in all cases, whether the face was covered by a mask, sunglasses, or not at all.”

Lobue concluded that while the pandemic may have effects on children’s emotional development, “for now, we can take some solace in the fact that children are quite flexible in terms of what and how they learn, and most of them are pretty resilient, especially with the protection of a face mask.”

What this article does not take into account, however, is the clear problem that results both from children not experiencing facial cues from other people and the fact that they haven’t needed to use their faces to express themselves. For over a year, they have not regularly practiced using their own faces for cues, which is an essential part of social interactions.

Children might be “resilient,” but they are children. They do not decide what is best for them. That’s the job of the adults in their lives. Forcing them to cover their faces at school and camp is no longer what is best for them — or for anybody.

The pandemic is waning, cases are going down and the world is beginning to reopen. When a threat is dissipating, yet the symbol of the threat remains, this only causes anxiety when there is no need for it. While adults can think logically about the need for mask-wearing, children are not so fortunate. They look to adults for direction on how to act, and if the adults are still wearing face coverings, appearing to live in fear, then they will, too. 

Adults who have recently taken off their masks might be able to attest to the odd feeling that they are doing something wrong, the sensation that they should put something on their face. They may even forget to smile at the store clerk because they don’t realize their mouth is uncovered. 

Teaching children to conform to a certain way of acting — a way that is not normal and was never meant to be permanent — will have consequences. Any argument to the contrary is anti-science, anti-“common-sense,” and infringes on the very freedoms the “adults in the room” should be eagerly affording this nation’s children.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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