This Just In: 10 Year Olds With Mobile Phones

According to The Carphone Warehouse [Cellular-News], most 10 year olds in the UK own a cell phone, based on survey of 1250 cell phone owners, aged 11-17. I guess their parents aren’t concerned with claims of mouth, throat and ear cancer caused by increased cell phone usage exposure.

But then again, I never put much stock in any survey of less than 10,000 people that purports to represent an entire populace. Or maybe it’s Cellular-News’ poor wording, equating “51% of 10 years olds” with “most 10 year olds”. Then again, that’s certainly more than 24% of nine year olds who have a phone.

Yikes. I’m wondering if parents have more to worry about than preventing cervical cancer by forcing their nine- to twelve-year old daughters to take injections. Read the Cellular News piece; it paints a scary picture of how reliant some youth, especially girls, are on their cell phones. (Although no mention of cancer; that’s just me talking.)

Now fast forward a few years. Wearable VoIP is ubiquitous. In fact, we might even see little flash memory stick-based VoIP phones in boxes of cereal. Kind of like the Vonage V-Phone, but with no need to plug it into a USB port. Everyone is wired, with or without consuming sugar.