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In a world where everyone is busy texting and chatting, more and more parents believe that their little ones should join the fun. In spite of dire warnings about the long-term harm that mobile phone use may wreak on young children’s mental and physical health, we have just passed the tipping point: more than half of British children aged between 5 and 9 own a mobile phone.
Now, in this rapidly expanding market, a major network is about to adopt a range of kiddie-phones designed for children as young as 4, with claims that its handsets are safer and smarter. But can there be any sense in texting toddlers?
Health concerns about the impact of mobile phone use on adults’ brains may have largely subsided but government guidelines still warn that children’s vulnerable grey matter should be protected. Professor Lawrie Challis, an emeritus professor of physics who has led the Government’s mobile-phone safety research, says that parents should not give children phones before secondary school. After that, they should encourage them to text rather than to make calls, as texting exposes their brains to lower levels of electromagnetic radiation.
“We have no idea if they are different in reaction to this sort of radio frequency,” says Challis, “but there are reasons why they may be — children react differently to ionising radiation, radioactivity and gamma rays. If you are exposed to too much sunlight as a child, you are far more likely to get skin cancer than if you are exposed as an adult.”
A disturbing study by researchers at Örebro University Hospital in Sweden last year indicated that children may be five times more likely to get brain cancer if they use mobile phones.
On top of this comes new concern about the long-term effects of mobile phone use on the mental health of youngsters. This month Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, a leading Australian psychologist, called parents who allow young children to use mobile phones “insane”. Carr-Gregg, a University of Melbourne professor of paediatrics, is worried about the power of mobile phones to distract and overexcite.
According to a new survey conducted by Carr-Gregg, 40 per cent of children with mobile phones are sleepdeprived on school nights, as peer pressure has made it normal for children of 6 and 7 to stay up until the early hours texting friends. His evidence, revealed in a series of Australian academic seminars, suggests that millions of children are allowed mobile phones in their bedrooms, creating a generation of overtired “zombies”.
Other new research has linked sleep deprivation in children with hyperactivity symptoms and hormone imbalances that increase the risk of obesity and diabetes. Carr-Gregg says that no child should be allowed a mobile phone until the age of 12.
Nevertheless, the landmark point at which more than half of British children aged between 5 and 9 own mobiles has been passed, according to research by Josh Dhaliwal, the co-founder of MobileYouth, a specialist research consultancy that tracks young people’s technology use. “Lots of children’s phones tend to be hand-me-downs from adults,” he says. “My sister gave her seven-year-old daughter a mobile for her birthday and that’s about the norm now.”
Sensibilities are changing rapidly: a recent poll by Populous suggested that the number of parents who believe that it is acceptable to allow a child under 12 to own a mobile phone has increased by more than a third in the past 12 months. Until now, fears of a parental backlash have deterred mobile networks from marketing handsets in the UK specifically for the very young. A planned Disney service aimed at those aged 8 to 14 was scrapped in 2006 because of an “adverse retail environment”. All that is about to change, says Dhaliwal.
Frances Crean, a mother of three, says that a family panic led them to look for a youngster-friendly phone: “In summer 2006 we had a health scare with our daughter. She was 6 and attending a day camp when she developed a sore neck and a rash — classic symptoms of meningitis. Nobody at the camp had contacted us to say that she was unwell, but when she was collected we realised that she looked very ill and rushed her to hospital. Thankfully we got the all-clear. We wanted to find a phone that would be safe for her and found this one being made in America. We felt that if we didn’t market it now, someone else would.”
Not everyone in Ireland considers the Firefly a boon for young children, though. Aine Lynch, the chief executive of the National Parents Council, argues that the Firefly would be more appropriate for children aged 11 or 12, rather than those as young as 4. She points out that it would prevent them from accessing the internet, ringing up inflated phone bills or calling and texting people unknown to their parents. “Targeting a phone at a four-year-old causes us concern,” she says. “It gives rise to questions as to where parental responsibility is going. Why would kids need to be contacted by mobile phone? Why are they not in the care of their parents, teachers or supervisors?”
Other European countries are heading in the opposite direction to Britain and Ireland: the French Government introduced laws earlier this year that ban sales of mobile phones to children under 6 and prohibit advertising them to children under 12. And a report released in January by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority concluded that children’s use of mobile phones should be limited until the potential long-term health risks are identified. But in Britain, the Government’s watchdog, the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme, appears to have stalled on its declared plan to fund such a study. No work has been commissioned from its £3.1 million research budget.
Given this apparent official indifference, toddler-phones are set to become an increasingly common UK phenomenon, says MobileYouth’s Dhaliwal. Several other companies, including Samsung, are building handsets for children aged 4-5 with limited functionality, though none is yet signed to a UK network, he says. Given the parental enthusiasm for dialling up their little darlings, such phones may prove to be the best option, he adds. “There are legitimate reasons why you would not sensibly want a child to have a fully functioning handset, even though people currently do this. You are giving them access to the internet and you can’t control what sort of people gain access to them. At least restricted kiddie mobiles prevent this from happening.”
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