Children ignore mobile phone health warning

[bamalli]

Children ignore mobile phone health warning
mobile users at school
Mobile phones are owned by 90% of schoolchildren
A study of children and mobile phone use has found that some spend up to 45 minutes a day making calls.

Last year the government's Stewart Report warned against children using mobiles because of the unknown effects of microwave radiation on developing brains.

But the study, by the Centre for Science Education at Sheffield Hallam University, found that 90% of the under-16s own a mobile and one in 10 spend more than 45 minutes a day using it.

Researchers interviewed 1,000 pupils - the number surveyed for the Stewart Report - 941 of whom were under 16 - the age range the report targeted.

The results showed that more than two thirds of the children have had their phones for between one and three years.


I'm amazed by how much time some students spend on their mobiles

Tony Sherborne
Pupil Researcher Initiative
Of the 941 surveyed, 77% use their phone for less than 15 minutes a day, 5.4% for more than an hour and 4.6% for more than 45 minutes, while 11% believe they have been affected by radiation from the phone.

Text messages are sent and received by 96% of the children surveyed - with 16% sending 10 or more a day.

The research was conducted by the Pupil Researcher Initiative (PRI), a curriculum development project from two of the UK's Research Councils.

PRI's Tony Sherborne, who devised the survey, said: "I'm amazed by how much time some students spend on their mobiles.

Dr Alan Preece, a medical physics researcher at Bristol Oncology Centre, said: "Until such time as the research assures us there are no health effects, short or long-term, then the more children themselves are informed, the better."