I think the behavorial problems are a result of the mother being on the phone and not paying attention to their children rather than the cell phone use harming the baby. Hang up the phone and pay attention to your children and we will see how the “behavorial problems” decrease. Don’t get me wrong. I believe there are true behavorial problems among children but they would be greatly reduced if we would put our children first above our perceived needs.

This is insane. The causal effect is the mothers not paying attention to their kids, not disciplining them, and basically being the typical crappy parents that characterize about 75% of today’s “parents.” Just as in every aspect of our society today, the individual is being taught by the media, the schools, the scientific community, and their own families, that they have no personal responsibility for their own circumstances. This applies to the article’s topic, hyper brats of parents with cell phones, to welfare, drug use, crime, etc. It’s sad commentary on our humanity when our ability to control so much of our environment, for good or evil, is excused away as hapless fate or as conditions beyond our control.

I have to agree with Martha. My thought just from reading the headline was this was not a cell phone problem, this was a parenting problem. I think you’d see the same results with a mother distracted by anything (i.e. TV, cell phones, video games, etc). If we pay attention to our kids, we are there to direct, correct, and praise them at the appropriate times and head off many of the behavioral problems. I think this report was sensationalized just to get attention. They mention, way too casually, that cell phones may not be the cause of the problem but use that as their headline. I doubt the professionalism if the people conducting the study and publishing the report. Correlation does not mean causation.

This may be the most ridiculous study I have ever heard of. Surely UCLA has better projects to spend their money on. How about they do a study on parents ignoring their kids and the likelihood of that leading to behavioral problems??? Better yet, how about we do a study on how much money the idiotic professors at UCLA can waste in a single semester. Parents need to grow up and spend time with their kids… That is obviously the problem here… UCLA professors need to grow up and do a study that leads to useful data. This is the kind of crap that makes people laugh at UCLA and other college studies. I think I actually got dumber reading this article and can’t believe I actually commented on it.

I too believe that it’s more related to mom’s (and dad’s) spending too much time on the phone and not paying attention to their children. Everytime I’m at the park there are always a parent or two that spend the whole time on the phone and don’t interact with their kids at all. It’s so sad.

Haha. I talked on my cell phone with all 4 of my kids and nothing is wrong with my little angels. Maybe pregnant woman should just lock themselves in a room for nine months to avoid all the not serious risks too.

This is utterly ridiculous!

Yea, and next thing you know pregnant women who eat Cheetos, their babies are going to be born orange! Anything else to scare pregnant women? I’m so tired of hearing crap like this! Maybe pregnant women should just be locked in a room for 9 months with a bunch of water, prenatal vitamins, and 6 meals a day. Absolutely nothing else! Right? *rolls eyes*

I absolutely agree with Martha and Bill. But the parents who most need to hear this conversation will excuse themselves and their preoccupation with their own agendas because an expert said it wasn’t their fault. Giving themselves another crutch to avoid that time consuming pain-in-the-neck task of “raising the child”. When raising a child is looked at as an intrusion into “my time”, you lose the joy of the minutia of children. Children are all about moments, not years. The moments turn into years, but you have to be attentive to the moments.

I agree — these researchers confuse correlation for causation. Maybe it’s just that moms who yap away on cell phones are also less likely to pay attention to their kids.

I think this is crazy. And i am sick and tired of anything and everything *hurting* a pregnant woman and her fetus. How in the world did we ever survive? Our children have “behavioral” issues, because parents are either to lazy or too scared to punish their children. We get told we cant spank our child because it is child abuse, we cant ground them because it is against their rights as human being. Yeah and those kids that were never taught right from wrong and were never punished end up hurting people very badly. How about instead of blaming stupid things, but the blame where it actually belongs and quit piggybacking it on something else.

The problem is two fold. The researchers should know, especially since they are working in epidemiology, that a statistical result of less than 2.0 (even if the data is solid and the study group is huge) has virtually no merit and their result is only 1.54. The second problem is that a news media promotes this sort of scientific crap either because they are technically ignorant, or scaring people is just more profitable than honesty.

Get a life people. Parents no longer know how to parent. Little Johnny can do what little Johnny wants to do! Soooo, must drug little Johnny to even live with the little @#$%! Don’t blame it on a cell phone….go to the source of parenting. The parents drug themselves to deal with their drugges child. They even snort the ADHD medication which leads to further poor parenting. Then when little Johnny grows up and gets kicked out of kindergarden, juvenile delinquent, later prison. It is all little Johnny with no parent at fault ! Lame culture we have going these days.

This is the most crazy thing I have read. Almost every going to be mother has a cell phone and use it during prenancy. So they are saying that every child is going to have behavioral problems and the world is going to be a hateful mean place.

Wow,
I’m 9 months pregnant and constantly use my cell phone for my job. I guess my baby will be born with a lot of problems, such as ADHD, autism, hyperactive, bi-polar, etc. What a joke. These studies are utter crap!

This is so ridculous… everytime you turn around.. cell phones cause all kinds of stuff.. where is the proof… im so sick of this.. the problem most likely is genetic…

I think that this study is utterly ridiculous. The problem with kids these days is that parents are so involved in other things that take time away from time with their children. Additionally, parents are so limited in parenting their children, God forbi you spank your child, you may have DCF involved in your life. Disciplining was taken away from schools and they have more problems there as well. We never had these problems in school when I was growing up, it was called a visit to the principal’s office, a call to your parent, and a wooden paddle. Not a note home, time out, etc. TIme has shown those things don’t work. Just look at the generation in middle school and teens these days. Those parents should be absolutely embarrased by how their children have turned out. They need to seriously take those kids and give them a good swift kick in the butt. Don’t give up on these kids. Give parenting rights back to the parents, that is the answer.

I’ll play devil’s advocate. What if it is true? Could it explain the huge increase in autism in recent years?
I honestly don’t believe it, but maybe it’ll keep some people off the phone and paying attention to their kids.

It makes me wonder if an observation I have made could also be true. Does ultrasound cause ADD/ ADDHD? Ultrasound uses a wave at a different frequency from the radiowaves used by cell phones. They all are a form of energy. Has this ever been tested and if so at what stage of devolopment? My observation is as the use of ultrasound has increased, so has the number of ADD/ ADDHD cases. Is this like DDT in the 60’s it came out as a safe pestacide only to discover a few years later that it impacted the eggs of eagles. The hazard existed all along, but until someone notes a trend and it was tested, we were unaware of what was really happening.

I think this is insane. I think that today everyone is looking for some bigger thing to blame their childrens behaviorial problems on rather then taking responsibility to teach their children right and wrong and use the correct form of disicpline to enforce that behavior.

the idea that somebody useage of a phone can be a cuase of bad behavior is completely and totally ridiclous. the only thing that truly causes bad bahavior is the parents lack of dicipline in their children. If a child does something bad they sould be properly punished, whether it be a lecture or an old fashion ass whippin. which i think is the problem with todays society. there needs to be more corperal punishment and less o baby o baby…pop ur tity out the kids mouth and stop babyin them!!!!!!!1

Melissa Browne: Did you read the study or only the press release? This is another example of the press getting off in hysterics without data. Were the methodologies sound? Are we talking about absolute or relative risk? What are the true demoninators? What other factors were considered? We have press releases two months before the paper is available (its not even available on their pre-publication page (Fas-Trak) and no means of reading, assessing and analyzing the study and its findings. UCLA, the journal, the authors all should be ashamed. My only conclusion is that they are hiding faulty design, faulty statistics, faulty interpretation and are trying to get out an anti-cell phone message before the truth catches up with them

Could it be possible the behavioral problems are because the mom’s are constantly on cell phones AFTER the baby is born, instead of paying attention to the child???

Actually, they are failing to link these two very important facts. There is a scientist who did a study where she put a group of people who were undergoing chelation therapy to get toxic heavy metals (including mercury and aluminum which are possible triggers of autism, which has some type of genetic predisposition) into EMF-free rooms and another group just in a regular treatment room. She found that the people undergoing chelation in the EMF-free room got rid of the toxic metals faster and more effectively than people in regular exam rooms. EMF’s include not only cell phones but wireless internet, anyone near huge electrical plants or towers, or any other area that has heavy EMF production. I resent the fact that people think just because you spend more time on the phone, you are paying less attention to your kids. Most people I know are using their cell phones while waiting in the car or driving in the car to maximize their efficiency.

Suggestion: Look at what happens AFTER the child is born. Parental cell phone addiction would be a much better bet for your studies. By what I see all around me every day, I would say that it is a form of child neglect. Just keep your eyes and ears open in the grocery stores, malls, when you see them driving, etc. There’s your best bet to find the problem.

I agree with the previous posts. My first thought was that maybe the women are guilty of paying more attention to their phones than their children, hence behavioral/emotional problems. Especially when you take into account that it becomes more obvious when the child reaches school age.

I’m a doctor and think this is bunk: it’s probably that the moms spend more time on the phone than interacting with their children.

But, if promoting this mythology gets people to turn the damn things off when they enter a doctor’s exam room, a bathroom, a movie theator or their car, then I’m all for promoting the rumor.

Then why don’t you phrase the title of the article that way?

In both cases the article title implies that their is a link. A clear and definitive link.

Aparently, every single thing on the planet is gonna kill/maim/cause cancer/decrease sperm count/make you retarded, so why not just add cell phones to the list of things that don’t actually do anything to your baby?

Another example of a university vying for some kind of grant to study the problem further. What a bunch of unmetigated untruths, this is in line with Gore’s global warming threat.

Not only is an unborn child at danger, but even more radiation danger can occure when young children the presence of others using cell phones and even more so, when they use a cell phone themselvs. Electro polution is said to on the same scale as asbestos and other toxins we recognize as dangerous to our health.

Please visit the websit to find out more. http://www.bioprosafe.com
925-683-3319

Perhaps the problem is associated with the smaller more compact cellular phones in use today. For example, a larger cellular phone of old would be more useful to smack your delinquent child with to change his poor behavior. Smaller phones wouldn’t seem to be very useful. I’ll defer to Naomi Campbell for her expertise.

“…may be other possible explanations for the rise in behavioral problems, including that mothers who were frequently on the phone through pregnancy might continue the pattern after birth and spend less time with their babies” … DUH…YA THINK!!!

Hi
Opinions are not the same thing as knowledge.
There is plenty of scientific evidence pointing to harm
Of course there are many factors that contribute to the rise in ADHD.
However why wouldn’t the cell phone be one?
It pumps out high levels of microwave radiation (trillions of times above that of the natural background levels)
In the 1950’s Dr Stewart noticed an increase in leukaemia in those children whose mothers had had a single fetal x-ray. At the time most doctors said this was rubbish.
It is now accepted.
We do not know the harm this new technology can do.
This was a study of 13,000 women. This is statistically significant by anyone’s standards.
We should take heed
please visit
http://www.mastsanity.org

as a radio hobbyist, we’ve known for ages that radio waves can cause damage. How much, and what type has always been a mystery, but direct exposure has always been known to be ‘not good’..
mobile phone users just dont realise that they are holding a radio transmitter in their hand, one that is constantly transmitting for the duration of the call. At least two-way radios dont transmit while you’re listening!

ALL ENERGY GOING INTO A HUMAN BODY HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE… no-one really knows where, or how much can be tolerated.

Sure they’re dangerous. How dangerous is still being argued over.

AND: dont stop at mobiles, the wireless network connection in your PC is far worse for your health than any mobile.

Please guys search on the internet about E-Smog. You will get some info about how dangerous waves are.