The secretary of health and social services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., targeted a new target this week as part of his program “Make America Healthy Again”: mobile phones in schools.
In An interview with “Fox & Friends” Kennedy greeted Thursday Mobile phone restrictions in schools And Dangers on the health listed He said was linked to the use of the phone in children and adolescents – some supported by scientific research, others less.
Kennedy has cited links established between the use of social media and depression and poor academic performance. But he also suggested that mobile phones “produce electromagnetic radiation, which has proven to cause neurological damage to children when they are around them all day, and cause cellular damage and even cancer.”
Studies have shown that excessive use of social media via smartphones can Negative impact on the mental health of adolescentsraising their risk of depression and anxiety. Scientists have also understood that using the mobile phone at school can lead to poor school performanceincluding lower grades.
However, most of the research has so far found no association between the use of the mobile phone and cancer, nor proof that mobile phones damage DNA. Mobile phones emit radiofrequency radiation, which has much less energy than ionizing radiation, such as that released by medical radiographs.
Kennedy’s statements follow one of his models, in which he mixes disinformation with scientific facts. Some of the problems he highlighted During its first five weeks more in powerLike the reduction of chronic diseases in children and the warning of the dangers of ultra -proposed food, have a large support between the public and many scientists. But some Kennedy factors blame these problems and some of its proposed solutions – as substituting beef For seed catering seeds – are not supported by research.
So, also for mobile phones in schools. The restriction of their use is a problem that managers have adopted on both sides of the aisle. Last year, Vivek Murthy, then the general surgeon of the Biden administration, Called schools to get rid of the phones in class. Nine states have already promulgated these Prohibitions or restrictionsAnd 15 states and Washington, DC, have introduced legislation to do so, according to KFF, a non -profit health reflection group.
“Both in red states and in blue states, there are a lot of concerns about children and mobile phones, so I think there is bipartite support on this subject,” said Annette Campbell Anderson, assistant director of Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools.
However, there is no reason to fear a risk of cancer to use your mobile phone at the moment, said Jerrold Bushberg, clinical radiation professor at the University of California in Davis.
“There is a lot of low quality research in the literature that, if you wanted to collect all of this and put it together, it would seem very overwhelming,” he said. “There are many groups of activists who promote these studies and say that it is the truth.”
An HHS spokesman did not respond to a comment request.
What Kennedy says, and what studies say
Kennedy has made repeated affirmations and not based on physical damage to using the mobile phone in the past, including On Joe Rogan’s Podcast Last year.
During his confirmation hearing in January, Kennedy also told Senator Andy Kim, DN.J., that he had held his previous statements according to which Wi-Fi cancer, claiming that he had “won a case before the Court of Appeal against the FCC on this very question”.
The anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded, Children’s Health Defense, challenged the decision of the Federal Communications Commission not to examine its health and security guidelines in 1996 for wireless technologies. A Court of Appeal governed in favor of the complainants And ordered the FCC to explain how its directives protect against the effects potentially harmful to health. However, this case concerned health problems unrelated to cancer, and the court did not take a position on the potential effects of the health of mobile phones.
Until now, research has been “very reassuring” on mobile phones safety, Bushberg said.
Most studies have examined whether exposure to radiation from mobile phones could increase the risk of brain tumors, since people often keep their phone by the head during their speaking. But the overall rates of brain cancer have not increased because mobile phones have become more widely used. And A great study Among the children found no association between the use of the wireless phone and the brain tumors.
THE National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration – the agencies that Kennedy now supervises – as well as the Environmental protection agency All said that there was not enough scientific evidence to associate the use of the mobile phone with cancer. However, the International Cancer Research Agency has classified radio frequencies as perhaps carcinogenic, which means that it cannot exclude a causal link.
Several questions remain, said David McCormick, professor of biology at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
“I think it is quite clear that Mr. Kennedy does not necessarily pay much attention to most of the scientific data that exists.
In a 2017 studyMcCormick and his colleagues researchers have exposed rodents radiofrequency radiation And found an increased rate possible of certain tumors. However, the results of laboratory animals do not necessarily apply to humans, given the many biological differences, and studies contained limits that prevented researchers from drawing conclusions.
A decade earlier, a The study examined the use of the mobile phone Among more than 5,000 people with brain tumors and found an increased risk of tumors as possible in the 10% that used their phones the most. But research was based on people’s memories on the use of the past phone, which is not always reliable, so its results (like those in similar studies) are difficult to interpret.
The use of mobile phone has also changed in recent years, said McCormick, which could affect the exhibition. While studies have previously examined the effects of 2G or 3G mobile signals, high frequency networks are common today are common today. And people now send SMS as much if not more than they call, so there is potentially less radiation near the brain.
The advantages and disadvantages of mobile phone prohibitions
Despite the bipartite support for mobile phones restrictions in schools, many disagreements persist precisely what these rules should look like.
Telephones can have rescue services – for example, by allowing children to call 911 – so that some parents fear that purely and simple prohibitions can compromise their child’s safety. Anderson said political decision -makers should weigh these concerns against children’s mental health risks and their ability to concentrate in class.
“Part of what schools are trying to do is to understand how to retaliate control of what happened in their school climates because of the phone-everything, from the use of the phone to band fighting and the incidents that occur in schools to children who use them to make tiktoks,” she said.
The right approach probably differs from one school to another, she added. For example, in schools where mobile phones are the only device connected to the Internet, a ban can make less sense.
In his interview Thursday, Kennedy applauded the governor of Virginie Glenn Youngkin, who published last year a decree leading the Department of State Education to Advice project for public schools should restrict or eliminate the use of the phone And reserve $ 500,000 to finance these efforts. Kennedy visited a high school in Virginia on Monday which adopted the change, which, according to him, the students and the teachers welcomed.
“States that have revealed that it is a much healthier environment when children do not use mobile phones in schools,” said Kennedy.
However, before becoming HHS secretary, Kennedy suggested that he personally supports the release of school phones, parents and teachers should make their own decisions.
“Do we really want the government to decide when, where and how we communicate?” he Written on x in 2023.