Page 48 - Spring 2019 Journal

Reading Between the Lines
By Merinda Teller
Children’s Love Affair with Tablets: Neither Cute nor Harmless
Children and their developing nervous systems are uniquely vulnerable to radiofrequency radiation.
In 2010, Apple launched its first iPad. The event made a big splash in the tech marketplace, almost instantly transforming tablets from “fic- tional gadgets from the future” into “essential everyday companions.”1 More significantly, the iPad and other tablet brands began reshaping
time—namely, the risks associated with the radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic radiation that tablets and other mobile devices produce.11 This concern should be paramount, however, because children and their developing nervous
systems are uniquely vulnerable to RF radia-
consumer expectations, feeding an insatiable demand for kid-friendly hand-held devices3— and young children became some of the tablets’ most avid users. By 2017, almost four in five U.S. families with young children had a tablet in the home.4 In fact, as one reporter quipped, “If you are an adult in possession of both a tablet and children, the children are likely to take posses- sion of the tablet.”5
Children’s ready adoption of these entic- ing accessories has drawn praise from some quarters and consternation from others. For example, after a research team in the UK con- ducted studies seeming to show that the devices accelerated certain developmental milestones,6 the investigators enthusiastically gushed that “tablets should be part of a baby’s world from birth.”7 On the other hand, a Harvard expert who has questioned the wisdom of tablet use by very young children reminds parents of the irreplace- able importance of experiential learning—the feeling of paint “squishing through...fingers.”8 Even the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)—a trade organization not otherwise known for adopting enlightened positions on child health—crafted a policy statement warn- ing of the potential for harm from “excessive digital media use” and agreeing that what young children need most is “hands-on exploration and social interaction with trusted caregivers.”9
As some developmental experts inch toward branding young people’s diet of empty media “calories” as a public health issue,10 there is an- other set of dangers that has remained largely off the table in discussions about children’s screen
Over a decade ago, a group of researchers was already cautioning that because exposure to manmade RF radiation is widespread, even the smallest effects “can have large public health consequences.”13
THE EVIDENCE IS IN
In 2014, a news report on young people’s
use of tablets asserted that “the dangers of tablet use for children—if dangers exist—are as yet unidentified.”5 This disingenuous opinion ig- nored the game-changing pronouncement made a few years earlier (in 2011) by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Re- search on Cancer (IARC), which classified the RF radiation from cell phones and comparable devices as a “possible human carcinogen.”14 IARC members clarified that this carcinogenic potential held for “all types of radiation within the radiofrequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum, including the radiation emitted by base-station antennas, radio/TV towers, radar and Wi-Fi.”15 And, in terms of radiation effects, all of the wireless devices commonly used by children—tablets, laptops and smartphones— “pack the same punch under the hood.”16
In 2018, the U.S. National Toxicology Pro- gram (NTP) reinforced IARC’s warnings by releasing findings from a rigorous twenty-five- million-dollar cell phone study that bumped the evidence of carcinogenicity up from “possible” to “conclusive.”17 The senior scientist who led the design of the study stated, “We can no longer assume any current or future wireless technol- ogy is safe.”18 Although many of the media
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Wise Traditions
SPRING 2019