Those earbuds have always made me wonder about hearing loss. Here you have something buried in your ear canal pumping and thumping and hissing, that cannot be a recipe for good hearing. My son is bad enough with headphones. I shouldn’t be talking, when I was his age I was hanging at Ozzy, Kiss and Quiet Riot concerts without protection. Older and wiser, I did use ear protection for the Metallica / Godsmack concert.

Turns out Apple — after a class action lawsuit — is making it so parents can lock down the max volume and protect their children’s ears:

The software update, which is available as a free download for the iPod nano and fifth generation iPod, gives users the ability to set volume caps on the iPod and lock it with a combination code, Apple said.

We really need to tell our teenager to shed the headphones and just let it crank. Much safer that way. Think I’ll point him here and hope he doesn’t think dad is a square, dweeb or whatever they use to smack back on us these days.

He’ll regret listening to things too loud someday. I did.