Maternal cell phone use in early pregnancy & child's language, communication & motor skills at 3 & 5 years: Norwegian mother child cohort study

Abstract

Abstract Summary

Overview

The burgeoning use of cell phones during pregnancy has raised public health concerns. In this context, we investigated the potential impact of maternal cell phone use during pregnancy on the language, communication, and motor skills of children at 3 and 5 years of age.

Methods

• This study is a part of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), with a participant pool consisting of 45,389 mother-child pairs.
• Data collection was done by questionnaire targeting the frequency of maternal cell phone use in early pregnancy and evaluating child's skills in language, communication, and motor functions when they reached 3 and 5 years old.
• Associational strength was quantified using logistic regression.

Findings

A significant percentage of mothers reported various degrees of cell phone usage. Children whose mothers used cell phones during pregnancy exhibited, at 3 years old:

• A reduced risk of having low sentence complexity.
• A lower likelihood of scoring low in motor skills, a trend not observed at 5 years.

No significant correlation was found between maternal cell phone use and reduced communication skills in children.

Conclusion

Interestingly, the study suggests prenatal cell phone use, contrary to concerns, may be associated with certain developmental benefits in language and motor skills at three years. This suggest enhanced mother-child interactions among cell phone users.

No evidence of adverse effects from prenatal cell phone exposure on neurodevelopmental indicators was found.