Mobile phones: harmful waves for teens' memory?

Smartphones could be harmful to the memory of young people. In any case, this is the conclusion of a study conducted by the Swiss Public Health Institute, Swiss TPH, for one year among 700 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. The results will be published in their entirety on July 23, but the first conclusions of the study were relayed this Thursday by the Swiss newspaper Le Temps.

According to the Swiss TPH, the high-frequency electromagnetic fields that emit the smartphones can have harmful effects on the development of memory in different brain areas. The study shows a significant drop in the performance of "memory figurale" among young people who use their mobile phone on the right ear. This memory of forms develops mainly in the right hemisphere of the brain. To evaluate it, tests are carried out on a computer using different abstract figures to be badembled.

Absorption of electromagnetic rays

According to Professor Martin Röösli, at the origin of the study, the dose Electromagnetic radiation absorbed by the students is responsible for the significant decrease in memory performance observed during these tests. For comparison, according to the study, the sending of messages, video games or surfing the Internet generate only a slight irradiation of brain areas related to memory.

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This tends to confirm that mobile phones are harmful to memory when put in the ear, as the results of a first survey conducted in 2015 and published in the journal Environment International ] already seemed to indicate, recalls Le Temps . However, researchers believe that new research will be needed to exclude certain factors, such as puberty, which may also affect cognitive abilities.

Alerts in France since 2016

The study conducted by the Swiss team also echoes the conclusions of experts from the National Agency for Food Safety, Environment and Labor (ANSES) who, in 2016, alerted about the possible effects of radio frequencies on the cognitive functions of the youngest

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