Yes, but only when two things add up: sound that is loud enough, for long enough. A game headset plays sound a few centimetres from the eardrum, and a tense match with explosions, voice chat and music can run for hours. Most of the time nothing bad happens. Over months and years, though, loud listening can slowly wear out the tiny hair cells in the inner ear. Those cells do not grow back, and the damage is painless while it happens.
The good news is that you do not need to ban headsets. You only need to know two numbers: how loud the sound is, and how long it plays.
Sound level is measured in decibels (dB). The scale is not a ruler. Every 3 dB more roughly doubles the sound energy reaching the ear. That is why health agencies halve the allowed listening time for every 3 dB increase. US workplace guidance from NIOSH, for example, sets 85 dBA as the limit for an eight-hour day and says to cut the time in half for each extra 3 dBA. At about 85 dBA you would have to raise your voice to be heard by someone 3 feet away. At about 95 dBA you would have to shout.
For children, guidance is more cautious. Children's hospitals commonly point to about 75 dB as a comfortable ceiling for kids, in line with the World Health Organization's advice of no more than around 40 hours a week of personal audio. Treat that as a safe target, not a cliff edge.
Set the loudness at the ear and the hours played in one day. The calculator uses the halving rule above and shows how much of a day's "safe listening budget" gets used. It is a simple model for building intuition, not a medical measurement.
Notice how steep it gets. In child mode, 75 dB allows nearly six hours a day. Just 9 dB higher, at 84 dB, the same budget is gone in under an hour. That is the whole lesson: a small turn of the volume wheel makes a big difference to safe time.
The volume number on a console or PC is not decibels. The same "50%" can be gentle on one headset and painfully loud on another, because headsets differ in how efficiently they turn signal into sound. Games add to the problem: they are mixed to be exciting, with sudden loud peaks, and voice chat can sit on top of the game audio. Kids also tend to turn things up to hear footsteps or teammates over noise in the room.
A few things do work without any equipment. If you can clearly hear a headset from an arm's length away, it is too loud. If your child cannot hear you talking at normal volume from across the table, it is too loud. And ringing or muffled hearing after a session is a clear signal to turn it down and take a long break. If it keeps happening, see a doctor.
You can fix most of this with settings and habits rather than shopping:
Many phones, consoles and headsets have a volume limiter or a headphone-safety setting; turn it on if it exists. Lower the voice chat volume separately from the game, and use the game's audio options to reduce loud effects if it offers a dynamic range or night-mode setting. Set the volume once, together, and then leave it.
Take a short listening break about every hour. Use speakers for casual solo play, since sound from across a room is much less of a risk than sound inside the ear. Ask about volume the same way you ask about screen time: as a normal, friendly check rather than a telling-off.
A built-in volume limiter is a useful feature, but treat "kid-safe" labels with some caution: some children's headphones can still play louder than the 75 dB target, so the habits above still apply. Over-ear designs that seal comfortably let kids hear the game at a lower volume than loose, leaky ones do, because less outside noise gets in.