Careless driving and rude public behavior are common symptoms of the cell phone habit. Now, research in Denmark has gone farther, suggesting that wireless use by expectant mothers may cause their kids to act out.
Children whose mothers regularly used cell phones while pregnant are more likely to display behavioral problems, according to the study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The study looked at data on about 28,000 7-year-olds and their mothers who took part in the large study that has tracked 100,000 women who were pregnant between 1996 and 2002.
Mothers who used cell phones while pregnant, and whose children later used cell phones themselves, were 50 percent more likely to have behavioral problems, the research found. Children whose mothers used cell phones but who did not use the devices themselves were 40 percent more likely to have behavioral problems.
Although researchers tried to account for other possible reasons for the findings, they found no other explanation.
“We looked at social status, we looked at the sex of the child, we looked at the mother’s history of behavioral problems, we looked at the mother’s age and stress during pregnancy and whether the child was breastfed or not,” Dr. Leeka Kheifets, an epidemiologist at the University of California Los Angeles who led the study, told Reuters.
The study does not demonstrate that cell phone use causes the behavioral problems, nor suggests a possible way that it could, leading some to question the findings.
“I am skeptical of these results, even though they will get a lot of publicity,” David Spiegelhalter, a professor of Biostatistics at Britain’s University of Cambridge, told Reuters.
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