Is Wi-Fi Dangerous For Children?
A group of Canadian parents is lobbying to have the wi-fi turned off in their children’s schools. They’re not worried about the distraction factor of endless internet access. Instead, they claim the wi-fi networks are causing health problems for the kids.
Numerous parents in Ontario are sharing anecdotal stories about kids suffering from headaches, dizzyness, concentration problems and nausea while at school. As evidence that the schools’ wi-fi networks must be to blame, the parents point out that their kids don’t suffer these symptoms on weekends.
Should these people be wearing tinfoil hats, or is there something to be concerned about there?
All the available data suggest it’s tinfoil hat time. While the parents’ concerns are real, wi-fi is unlikely to be the source of their troubles. They have nothing but anecdote to back up their claims, which is probably why the school boards aren’t taking them very seriously.
One mother complained about the demand for evidence, saying, “What doctor has been schooled about the rate of microwave infections?”
Now, let me break that down for you.
- Microwave radiation actually does not cause infections. It’s not like a virus.
- Wireless routers emit about as much radiation as your typical microwave oven, but spread out over your whole house.
- Radiation sickness is not an acute condition. If wi-fi were making these kids sick, the health effects would be slow and cumulative, not disappearing on weekends.
The signal from a wireless network is very low; one cell phone emits 10 times the radiation a router uses. Your kids absorb more heat from overhead lighting than they do from ambient wireless. We’re surrounded by radio frequencies and microwave radiation all day, every day. Just being on a city bus or in a typical office is going to expose you to more juice than being in a school with a wireless network.
Basically what this boils down to: change is scary. It’s easy to point a finger at something new that you don’t understand, and blame it for your troubles. But in this case, wi-fi’s almost certainly not the root cause of children’s headaches.
Photo: teddyb
Um, maybe their kids don’t like school and are trying for a sick day? Not that I ever falsely claimed headaches and nausea when I was a kid
Maybe the kids are faking it, like Donna says, or maybe they find attending school genuinely stressful, hard to concentrate on, confusing and sorta pukey.
Totally agree. It is interesting to see how these types of things get started.
I agree it could be stress, or a ruse to avoid school, or maybe it’s something else in the school building. Who knows what chemicals they use to clean the building, what pesticides or lawn chemicals they use outside, or what they are feeding the kids at lunch. Maybe there is something to be worried about that isn’t wi-fi. Or maybe it’s nothing.
gee, has anyone checked for, idk, MOLD? I live in the PNW, it’s pretty common here and I bet even more so in the danker, colder great white north (cananananada). Either that, or what Manjari said… pesticides, paints, cleaners, lawn chemicals, detergents in the caf, a whole host of potential environmental sources are up to question. I wonder why the parents latched onto wifi? Sheer idiocy or mob mentality hype?
Doesn’t consistent exposure to flourescent lighting do funky things to you, too? Maybe they’re better on the weekends because they get to go outside more, get more fresh air and natural light. Wi-fi. Honestly.
“Should these people be wearing tinfoil hats?” LOL
I definitely don’t know the details of all of this but I have wondered this myself. Not so much about headaches but the radiation. I try to turn off the Wifi card whenever possible. Better safe than sorry.
The problem isn’t WiFi. It’s a design problem discovered and solved forty years ago called Subliminal Distraction.
Pictures and video on-line shows these students using their laptops in crowded classrooms while sitting in each other’s peripheral vision without Cubicle Level Protection.
The cubicle solved this problem when it appeared in business offices in the 1960′s. Cubicles block peripheral vision for a concentrating worker preventing the subliminal detection of threat-movement which would normally trigger the vision startle reflex.
Once you understand you are in a safe location the startle will stop but you can’t turn off the brain system that subliminally detects ongoing movement. That subliminal appreciation of threat then colors thought and reason. One outcome is psychosomatic symptoms.
[...] Parents in Canada recently claimed that their school’s wireless network was making their kids sick. While this theory has been debunked, would you really want to walk around with a router strapped [...]