The question of whether mobile phones are safe for children to use and have is always a hotly debated subject, and the answer is twofold so we will look at both parts of the answer, which is firstly the health and secondly the safety.

Mobile Phone Health

When it comes to mobile phones and health, there has been some concern that holding a phone to the ear or being in range of the electromagnetic waves that it gives off can cause problems with our health. While customers are encouraged to use the hands-free function, carry their phone away from their body and not spend hours and hours attached to the phone there is no evidence to confirm or deny the carcinogenic risk of mobile phones.

However, we must consider that children have thinner bones and their skulls are less developed, so there are possible reasons why they would absorb more of the radiation is given off.

It is one of those battles a bit like whether smoking is good or bad for the health that will rage on forever. So, we next have to consider whether there is any need for children to have mobile phones. The phone is often put in children’s hands to get five minutes peace perhaps when you are waiting at the doctor surgery. 

But for children under 12, is there a need to make and receive phone calls? Of course, this is specific to every individual situation parents are away a lot or absent may argue that it is pertinent they can contact their children independently of the other guardian.

And this argument leads us to the safety of mobile phones. If a child has a mobile phone, they have access to a variety of things that are available on the Internet.

Unless you remove all the smartphone functionality from a mobile phone or indeed buy a basic mobile phone that was never designed to be a smartphone you have the potential for a child to get into trouble using things that are for people much older than them.

Which is where safety comes in, and it is down to the parents to install the correct parental controls on a device given to a young child. Sadly there are a lot of predators that use the Internet and social media applications, in particular, to try and converse with children sometimes posing as other children, so it is vital that you know what your child is doing when they are using their mobile phone.

App Limitations

Limiting access to things like the App Store makes sense, but in general, you will not be able to cut off the Internet; however, you can find plenty of tools available that will allow you to control what your child is looking at.

Within the home, you can apply parental controls to your Internet hub, which can apply to every device or specific devices that connect to it. The heart of the problem applies when you are outside of the home using the 4G network, and here you may need to find some third-party software to be able to create the lockdown you want on the phone. Of course, it is up to every individual parent to decide whether their child should or shouldn’t have a mobile phone, but it is worth considering both the health and safety aspects that come with mobile technology.