Detrimental Effect of Mobile Phones on Children’s Health

Majid Sultan-Mohammadi

Everyday new inventions change our world. Many inventions are only registered, but there are cases that have influenced our life considerably, mobile phones undoubtedly are one of them. Many inventions have transformed human’s life within the past 100 years. Before reaching commercial markets, nobody dared to imagine mobile phones as the closest friends of the modern human being; and unfortunately this unhealthy close friendship is being tighter everyday through emerging new mobile phone related gadgets and apps.

By the way how many times you coped with the anxiety caused by leaving your phone in the home?! Mobile phone is an amazing invention which is troublesome at the same time:

Misuse of Mobile Phone by Teens

Misusing cell phones, sending and receiving short message services (SMSs) are followed by several complications including joint pain, trouble sleeping, academic failure, anxiety, etc.

Therefore, children under 13 are banned from using mobile phones. Even teens under 16 are recommended to avoid cell phones.

Influence of Inappropriate Use of Mobile Phones among Teens

Teens now text messages late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back. They do it so much their thumbs hurt!

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

Dr. Abtahi, a pediatrician in Tehran, recently surveyed students at two local high schools and said he found that many were routinely sending hundreds of texts every day.

“That’s one every few minutes,” he said. “Then you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night. That’s going to cause sleep issues in an age group that’s already plagued with sleep issues.”

The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But American psychologists have studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop.

“Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” they said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

Psychologists expect to see teenagers break free from their parents as they grow into autonomous adults, they went on, “but if technology makes something like staying in touch very, very easy, that’s harder to do; now you have adolescents who are texting their mothers 15 times a day, asking things like, ‘Should I get the red shoes or the blue shoes?’ ”

As for peace and quiet, they said, “If something next to you is vibrating every couple of minutes, it makes it very difficult to be in that state of mind. If you’re being deluged by constant communication, the pressure to answer immediately is quite high,” they added. “So if you’re in the middle of a thought, forget it.”

Teenagers had a terrific interest in knowing what’s going on in the lives of their peers, coupled with a terrific anxiety about being out of the loop. For that reason, the rapid rise in texting has potential for great benefit and great harm.

Texting can be an enormous tool. It offers companionship and the promise of connectedness. At the same time, texting can make a youngster feel frightened and overly exposed.

Texting may also be taking a toll on teenagers’ thumbs. Roya, a ninth-grade student in Tehran used to text on her tiny phone as fast as she typed on a regular keyboard. A few months ago, she noticed a painful cramping in her thumbs. (Lately, she has been using a new touch phone she got for her 15th birthday, and she says texting is slower and less painful.)

An associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences said it was too early to tell whether this kind of stress is damaging. But he added, “Based on our experiences with computer users, we know intensive repetitive use of the upper extremities can lead to musculoskeletal disorders, so we have some reason to be concerned that too much texting could lead to temporary or permanent damage to the thumbs.”

Roya said that although her school, like most, forbids cellphone use in class, with the phone she could text by putting it under her coat or desk.

Her classmate Mina said, “You pretend you’re getting something out of your backpack.”

Teachers are often oblivious. “It’s a huge issue, and it’s rampant,” said a high school chemistry teacher. She recently gave an anonymous survey to 50 of her students; most said they texted during class.

“I can’t tell when it’s happening, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” she said. “And I’m not going to take the time every day to try to police it.”

Parents tend to be far less aware of texting than of, say, video game playing or general computer use, and the unlimited plans often mean that parents stop paying attention to billing details.

Still, some parents are starting to take measures. A Reporter said that late last year his 13-year-old daughter racked up 14,528 texts in one month. She would keep the phone on after going to bed, switching it to vibrate and waiting for it to light up and signal an incoming message.

“She should understand a little better, because she’s always on her iPhone,” her father said. “But she’s all like, ‘Oh well, I don’t want you texting.’ Teens feel they are being punished for behavior in which their parents indulge. And in what which is called a poignant twist, teenagers still need their parents’ undivided attention.

Even though they text 3,500 messages a week, when they walk out of their English language class, they’re upset to see their dad in the car on the laptop. The fantasy of every adolescent is that the parent is there, waiting, expectant, completely there for them.