Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took aim at a new target this week as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda: cell phones in schools.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, Kennedy praised cell phone restrictions in schools and listed health hazards that he said were linked to phone use among children and teens — some backed by scientific research, others less so.
Kennedy cited established links between social media use and depression and poor school performance. But he also suggested that cell phones “produce electromagnetic radiation, which has been shown to do neurological damage to kids when it’s around them all day, and to cause cellular damage and even cancer.”
Studies have found that excessive use of social media via smartphones can negatively impact teens’ mental health, elevating their risk of depression and anxiety. Scientists have also long understood that cell phone use in school can lead to poor academic performance, including lower grades.
However, the bulk of research so far has found no association between cell phone use and cancer, nor evidence that cell phones damage DNA. Cell phones emit radio frequency radiation, which has far less energy than ionizing radiation, such as that released by medical X-rays.
Kennedy’s statements follow a pattern of his, in which he mixes misinformation with scientific fact. Some of the issues he has highlighted during his first five-plus weeks in office, such as reducing chronic disease in children and warning of the dangers of ultraprocessed food, have broad support among the public and many scientists. But certain factors Kennedy blames for those problems and some of his proposed solutions — such as substituting beef tallow for seed oils in fast food — are not backed by research.
So, too, for cell phones in schools. Restricting their use is an issue leaders have embraced on both sides of the aisle. Vivek Murthy, while he was surgeon general under the Biden Administration last year, called on schools to get rid of phones in the classroom. Nine states have already enacted such bans or restrictions, and 15 states and Washington, D.C. have introduced legislation to do so, according to KFF, a nonprofit health think tank.
“Both in red states and blue states, there’s a lot of concern about kids and cell phones, so I do think that there is bipartisan support on this,” said Annette Campbell Anderson, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools.
However, there’s no reason to fear a cancer risk from using your cell phone at this time, said Jerrold Bushberg, a clinical professor of radiation oncology at the University of California, Davis.
“There’s a lot of low-quality research in the literature that, if you wanted to collect all that and put it together, it would look very damning,” he said. “There are many activist groups out there that promote those studies and say that that’s the truth.”
An HHS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
What Kennedy says, and what studies say
Kennedy has made repeated, unsubstantiated claims about the physical harms of cell phone use in the past, including on Joe Rogan’s podcast last year.
At his confirmation hearing in January, Kennedy also told Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., that he stood by his past statements that WiFi radiation causes cancer, saying that he had “won a case in front of the Court of Appeals against the FCC on that very issue.”
The anti-vaccine group that Kennedy founded, Children’s Health Defense, challenged the Federal Communications Commission’s decision not to review its 1996 health and safety guidelines for wireless-based technologies. An appeals court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered the FCC to explain how its guidelines protect against potentially harmful health effects. However, that case was about health issues unrelated to cancer, and the court did not take a position on the potential health effects of cell phone radiation.
Research thus far has been “very reassuring” about cell phone safety, Bushberg said.
