Mobile phones: The new contraceptive

by Joe P on February 8, 2008

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So it’s time to get intimate with your lover. You’ve got your room lined with candles, and you’re kissing your partner ever so passionately. It’s almost time to get down to business when the matter of contraception becomes imminent. “No worries, honey,” says the male. “I’ve been talking on my phone for three hours a day, every day this week.” Delighted, his partner leaps into his arms, and they — well, we don’t want to get into too many details. The c-h-i-l-d-r-e-n could be reading. But in any regard, a new study has “shown” that a high level of mobile phone usage can lead to lower fertility rates in males.

I put “shown” in quotes because I’ve got a small problem with this study. See, I’m an enormous baseball fan. Think it’s the greatest spectator sport ever invented. Would have slept outside a stadium to get a job if the front offices of baseball teams weren’t worked 80 hours a week and paid for 30.

Anyway, baseball is rife with statistics. And in order to properly analyze what these statistics mean, you need a significant sample size. Problem is, you don’t really get that in baseball. Why? Because even a guy who plays every day is going to step up to the plate — at the very most — 700 times in a season. And even that’s pretty rare. But that’s not really a large sample.

This study used 361 men, and broke them into four groups. In baseball, this would be like taking the results from the season’s first four months, and breaking a guy’s stats down month-by-month. Yeah, it’s neat to track how he’s done in each month, but it really doesn’t tell you anything, because you’re essentially basing it on an absurdly low number of at bats.

Hopefully you can see where I’m going with this. You have 361 men, and break them into four groups based on their mobile phone usage. You study them based on volume, liquefaction time, pH, viscosity, sperm count, motility, viability, and morphology. Yes, those are all terms referring to our little soldiers.

So the study showed that at heightened mobile phone usage, sperm count and mobility are most affected. So we’ve seen correlation in a small group. That’s fine and good. But you know what? A study also showed that mobile phone usage causes sleep disorders. Guess what? I use phones all freakin’ day. I get excellent sleep at night. So I think it’s fair to take these studies with a grain of salt.

But please, despite the first paragraph anecdote, don’t think that heavy mobile phone usage is a contraceptive.

[Tech Radar]

Filed under : Consumer Issues