Topical issues: the electromagnetic environment

With our modern environment full of electromagnetic fields, fom power transmision through to all forms of communication, the issues of how this affects our well-being are urgent.
 

Mobile phone addiction?

As you will see below from the news around the world, early recognition of repetitive strain disorders from too much texting has been replaced with real concerns about addiction. This has three aspects to it that deserve our attention, perhaps especially amongst younger people:

  • psychological
    • self-esteem
    • pressure
    • bullying and harassment
    • enslavement
    • attachment
  • sociological
    • peer group membership
    • work-life balance
    • business efficiency
    • personal space and etiquette
    • situational security (tracking and rescue)
  • physiological
    • key chemical changes under EM fields

These notes are just an introduction to raise awareness and discussion, and hopefully sufficient research awareness to avoid a generation of dependency.

Psychological

The psychological aspects to consider include personal self-esteem, pressure, bullying and harassment, enslavement and attachment. How would you feel if suddenly your mobile phone was absent for a month?

Self-esteem arises both in being called frequently (how many messages do you get a day?) and having people and reasons to call (how do you feel when you haven’t called anyone today?). The transaction is immediate; unlike emails, where a reply many days later for an ordinary messsage is acceptable: ‘You didn’t answer my text!!’, ‘Your phone was switched off!!’ Being available, always answering wherever you are, becomes more important than other social interactions, and conflicts with other tasks to be done. The call can’t wait; what will they think of me? I’ll be letting them down; They’ll ask someone else, then I won’t be asked first next time. What do you feel if suddenly no-one calls? Is the phone not working? What do you feel if the battery is flat and you haven’t got access to a charger? Aarrgh! What if someone calls: it will look like I’m not here/available! Ah! back to normal now; six people called me today; I’m worth something again.

Pressure arises when you can’t say no. The immediacy of the mobile, the directness, especially when it’s a work call or one of those social calls you can’t easily get out of, can make a mobile intervention hard to avoid or deprioritise. This is even more true when the call is playing on your self-esteem. Business pressures, the need always to seem willing and cheerful to play the game, do the extra task, the difficulty of saying no to your boss on the phone or by text... all these are a known pressure that is sometimes deliberately used. Deliberate bullying and harassment is a feature of that private one-to-one communication for too many children, but also represents misuse of the communication form, and people learning of losing their jobs by text message is another example. It is the privacy of the exchange that makes exposing it and resisting it difficult. The same privacy, incidentally that makes other private arrangements, including flirting and extra-marital affairs so easy (or potentially embarrassing).

The extreme case of perceived pressure is enslavement to the mobile, and a real psychological difficulty in being without it (whether of not it is used). Whether the expectation is by peers or work colleagues, or is a self-induced feeling of personal validation, for some people being separated any length of time from their phone is a genuine sense of loss. Maybe this is the flip-side of attachment, where the mobile has become almost a prosthetic extension, for what it represents in social contact, what it contains in memories, or the potential never to be separated from other people with mobiles.

Sociological

The sociological aspects to consider are peer group membership, work-life balance, business efficiency, personal space and etiquette, and situational safety. What would it do to your social life if suddenly your mobile phone was absent for a month?

Peer group membership is particularly important among young people, where daily (hourly) communication is expected to be instant (as with PC instant messaging services), and belonging to any of many intricate subgroups is sustained by always being there. It is an arena where mutual support can indeed flourish, but also where unseen bullying and harassment does take place. It is also a place from where it is difficult to withdraw and where unresolved conflicts disrupt the normal processes of maintaining friendships. Plans become much more short-term, as children walk out of their school or homes and spontaneously decide who is doing what and where. For many families this becomes a balance: not quite where their children are, for how long and with whom, is balanced by the ability to call them on their mobiles. Danger is created and (hopefully) danger is mitigated.

But the net result is that a generation now communicates totally independently from parents and guardians, forming complex relationships where the means of communication has become depersonalised. Children are taught (by advertising, lifestyle marketing, and use) that it is fun to love their phones. But the result is not always happiness, dissociation from same family relationships, and dependency. If you are not on your phone, if you haven’t got it with you, of if you have the wrong kind, or you haven’t got the latest ringtones, you can be heavily marginalised. Isolation is a real threat for some people if they are outside the mobile communications loop. Being in teh loop, but purposely excluded by the group can cause depression.

Work-life balance is a complex issue, usually set alongside business efficiency. Certainly for mobile workers of any kind, not having to go to a telephone or a desk means time is saved. (Safety and use of mobiles in vehicles is dealt with elsewhere.) For some situational safety is important, and as with children being getting into unwise situations on the guarantee that their mobile will save them, there is a supposition that the mobile protects. Employers feel they are better covered if employees in difficult social environments have this form of backup. (Some people venture out in boats and up mountains competely unprepared but with their mobile, should they get into difficulties.) The question of individual freedom, though, can be seen when people go on holiday, spend their weekends and family time, unable to leave their work-related communications behind. Being valued is not the same as being available 24/7 to your employer or colleagues! The business-ubiquitous Blackberry now has a colloquial name: the ‘crackberry’. Again, mobile communications are clearly immensely valuable, but they create social dependency.

Personal space and etiquette has been covered well elsewhere, and we all know how many people treat a call on their mobile as higher priority than anything (yes, anything!) they are engaged in, no matter where or with whom. The mobile validates the individual: they are needed, if not wanted, so they are valuable, so long as they are available. But the mobile often gets the priority attention, can call people away from anything anywhere, and apart from the way this speaks of the relative importance of face-to-face conversation or simply spending time with people, what used to be regarded as rude is now normal. It is also changing the nature of private space: the conversations, one half of which we are now privy to, are not always conversations we ever would have been otherwise invited to share. It has become rude, if unavoidable, to listen to a loud conversation in a public space (even in the next seat of a train) and we pretend not to have heard. And the reason the private/public, myspace/your space, significance/priority confusion arises at all, is because the mobile phone is a social validation of personal significance.

The reason so many people say ‘I can’t live without my mobile’ is that they have come to depend on it, not just for convenience, but for a sense of being in control, a sense of safety, a sense of being (hopefully) needed, and a sense of belonging to their mobile community. Here for many people, especially teenagers and younger people, is a growing dependency for psychological and sociological reasons.

This much we can say is dependency, that by and large is by choice. Teenagers are perhaps the most challenged group for finding normal social arrangements without mobiles, since individuals without are in the minority. But consider the money spent per month, and that gives some sense of value attached to the mobile that you simply cannot travel without. Read the news links below, and you can see that whether this is addiction or dependency, it is something serious to consider, and for some people this has gone a long way beyond convenience.

But is there anything more? Can we see if the constant absorption of digital microwave signals might be having a physiological effect on the addictive systems in our brains?

Physiological

The issue of physiological addiction is not confined to the instrument, rather to what it represents: certain behaviours, relationships, capacities, enjoyments and freedoms. Certain people may be more predisposed with predisposed brains. The question here is whether there is an influence on addictive responses, and what cause and effect might exist. Evidence of this might first be seen in withdrawal symptoms in people who, for one reason or another, suddenly stop habitual, frequent mobile use. Are there certain chemicals that might be affected, among the research into the bio-effects of digital microwave signals to the head? These might include, for example, glutamate, dopamine, serotonin, all of which play a role in addiction and impulsive behaviour. All, incidentally, are part of the nitric oxide cycle.

Addictive behaviour or conditioning takes place via the dopamine system and neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain. Several factors make this relevant:

  • the dopamine opiate system is affected by EM fields at mobile phone frequencies at brief and low intensities
  • EM fields affect the activity of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) enzymes, and altered levels of nitric oxide (NO) affect the dopamine system
  • nitric oxide plays a vital role in addiction.

In other words, there is research evidence to suggest that applying mobile phone radiation to the head is likely to affect the dopamine system, quite possibly via NO. Visit our health pages on nitric oxide to discover more.

Supporting literature

News around the world: indications of growing dependency or addiction

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