Cell phone use may cause behavioural problems in kids

Cell phone use may cause behavioural problems in kids

Staff Writer

MyBroadband | 08 December, 2010 | Comments

A new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that cell phone use could be associated with behavioural problems in 7 year-olds

The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health has published a report from a study which associated behavioural problems at age 7 years in children with cell phone use.

Based on the abstract of the paper, the authors published similar findings in the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC), which looked at prenatal and postnatal exposure to cell phone use and behavioural problems at age 7 years.

Exposure to cell phones prenatally, and to a lesser degree postnatally, was associated with more behavioural difficulties in the earlier study. The original analysis included nearly 13,000 children who reached age 7 years by November 2006.

They claim that the findings of the previous publication were replicated in this separate group of participants. The authors concede that the associations are weaker, but say that even with further control for an extended set of potential confounders, the associations remained.

To see if a larger, separate group of DNBC children would produce similar results after considering additional confounders, children of mothers who might better represent current users of cell phones were analysed. This ‘new’ dataset consisted of 28,745 children who turned seven years old by December 2008.

A greater number of children who had both prenatal and postnatal exposure to cell phones showed behavioural problems compared with children not exposed during either time period, the study concluded.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/17143-Cell-phone-use-may-cause-behavioural-problems-kids.html