Mobile phones: the next asbestos?

Published: October 13th, 2025

A controversial remark – or a very real threat to our humanity and well-being? The BBC2 Jeremy Vine talk show on Friday featured again the vexing issue of mobile phones. One caller described how she limited her own grandchildren’s use to two hours per day, with none at weekends. Other callers mentioned the huge volume of horrific material now available to children, eg. suicides. What is that doing to our young people? The programme also focused on whether mobile phones should be banned at mealtimes, so allowing more opportunities for children to talk. 

There is no doubt in my mind that online activity has become an obsession with younger people. It’s all around us – taking a walk, on the bus or train. We see mobile phones clutched in almost every hand. No wonder, we even have masked motorcyclists grabbing phones from the hands of vulnerable people as they walk around: it’s asking for trouble.

I don’t get it, but then I am one of the older generation brought up without these devices. In my twenties (1970s), I remember going out to a red public phone box in order to phone my parents. My first mobile phone was bought in case my car broke down on the motorway. A safety device mainly, and certainly not for the reasons that young people have them now. 

It is easy to see why mobile phones have become so addictive: with information available in mere seconds. Fast and furious. Colourful and fascinating – almost like a moving gallery of artwork. And most dangerous of all – instantly communicative. Are the brains of today’s young people, almost from toddlerhood, becoming ‘wired up’ differently? I think so. But what can we do about it? Are mobile phones causing human brains to run out of control? 

My previous blogs have focused on the sheer power of words to either connect and hold  society strongly together – or to destroy and separate. So my fear, returning to the ‘asbestos’ comment, is that on-line devices, as they continue to become more sophisticated, will also become more and more influential. Maybe they already are. 

What can we do? Should more parents start to severely limit mobile phone activity? Yes! Should all schools ban mobile phones from the premises? Yes, definitely! Experiments where this has already been tried have proved positive; with many young people saying that they eventually benefited from being without them.

There is no doubt that both talk and reading have taken a nose dive. And it is time to grapple with this potentially dangerous aspect of human life. Is it partly due to mobile phones that childhood is becoming shorter – as children grow up faster? Whilst we cannot turn back this tide, we can perhaps work with it – and preserve more of what has traditionally been called ‘childhood’. 

My latest book, ‘Becoming A Reader’ (Sylvia Edwards, Amazon), came about and developed as I was researching the third edition of ‘The SENCO Survival Guide’ (Routledge), while working in a primary and a secondary school, to support their reading endeavours. As a literacy specialist over many years, that important work inspired my passion to get children back to reading; as fully accomplished readers who also comprehend deeply and are therefore able to reflect on the words and sentences they have read, absorbed – and hopefully enjoyed.

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