Obnoxious Ringtones and Cell Phone Chattering Rattle Minds, Numbers of Depressed Anti-Social Kids Rising Still Higher
You’ve seen them drive slowly, swerving, then gunning it, or stopped in the middle of the street, oblivious, distracted, with one hand on the wheel and the other clapped to the side of the head.
They are drivers talking on cell phones, another driving hazard that motor vehicle administrations inflict on responsible drivers.
Outside of vehicles, cell phones become merely obnoxious. Yacking on the phone in restaurants, at the library, in the grocery check out line, and while walking down the street, along with their exasperating ringtones—the cell phone user has no presence of mind or empathy for others.
Recently, to add to their many annoyances, a study found a sickly link between cell phone use by pregnant mothers and their children.
The bottom line is that mothers who use cell phones get A.D.D. kids who exhibit anti-social behavior.
The scientists were surprised that holding a powerful radiation emitting device near a developing fetus could harm it, but further study strengthened the debilitating link.
They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the results “should be interpreted with caution” and checked by further studies. But they conclude that “if they are real they would have major public health implications”.
Whether cell phones or inattentive mothers are to blame, mothers yacking on cell phones are not a healthful and proper way to raise children. Cell phones near human bodies are probably not a good idea either:
The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection says that use of the phones by both pregnant women and children should be “limited”. It concludes that children who talk on the handsets are likely to suffer from “disruption of memory, decline of attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased irritability” in the short term, and that longer-term hazards include “depressive syndrome” and “degeneration of the nervous structures of the brain”. (independent.co.uk)
