OmniBlog

My 9 year old daughter has been gently persuading me to get her a cellphone. Some of her classmates at school already have one.

While a cellphone may be invaluable during an emergency, the risk that it may expose children to is a very important consideration. Health risk consideration is foremost and then the risk of cyberbullying. While the latter can be avoided by keeping the phone number private and strictly for family use, exposure to high level electromagnetic field due to cellphone use has to be handled carefully.

The decision on this has to be correct and evidence-based, as others are likely to emulate what she does. Her owning and using a mobile phone may be considered ‘healthy’ because her ‘doctor’ parents have approved it. Isn’t that a burdensome decision?

Search

So I started looking for authentic references, including searching on the PubMed archives. I will not go into the full details of search strategy and volume & stratification of results, but give a summary of what I learnt.

There are numerous reports of electromagnetic radiation of various body systems. But none of them are definitive. The common areas of focus have been on development of brain tumours, effects on auditory and vestibular system and effects on cell proliferation & development in many organs. Cyberbullying is also reported and discussed in detail in various papers. Specific risks for children is also a focus of many.

Uncertainty

But a reasonable conclusion is that the effect is uncertain. There is a lot of contradiction, almost bordering on confusion.

What do we do when there is uncertainty? Either use them minimally or completely avoid it. In this era, it is extremely difficult for adults to avoid cellphone use. The recommendation for adults is to use cellphones only when necessary and use a wireless headset or a speakerphone so that the cellphone is away from the body.

It is reasonable to assume that children are at a higher risk of the detrimental effects of cellphones (if any) than adults, due to their incompletely developed skull and brain tissues. In fact, a very recent newspaper report in BBC quoting unpublished early results from an ongoing study reported that “there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell phone use” and “we shouldn’t wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later”.

Conclusion

I tend to agree with that second part of the quoted statement. Err on the side of being safe, rather than being sorry later. After considering all the above and more, it’s a NO at this time for my daughter.