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Green Party’s Jill Stein Believes WiFi is Hurting Kids
(Photo: Flickr, Creative Commons)
Jill Stein, the Green Party’s candidate for President, has suggested that WiFi in schools is dangerous for children.
A recent poll found only 10% of Americans strongly supporting either of the two leading presidential candidates in the upcoming November election. As a result, more people are directing attention to the other candidates, including Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party. Recent polls show enough support for the two that they may actually get a podium in the election debates, which hasn’t been done for a candidate not in the Democratic or Republican parties since 1992.
Stein has previously referred to the use of technology in education as “a corporate ruse,” adding that “we should be moving away from screens at all levels of education.” She is now arguing that the use of WiFi in schools may be harming children, saying we “should not be subjecting kids’ brains to that.”
WiFi refers to the wireless data signals that are sent by routers to mobile devices used by millions each day to send and receive data, mostly through the Internet. Stein believes it is those signals that are affecting the brains of children around the world and causing them to die later on in life, writes Kieren McCarthy for The Register.
Stein was asked about her thoughts concerning the use of tablets and laptops by children in schools in order to complete their work. While many teachers are excited about the prospect of opening a new world to children through these devices, Stein suggests that their use poses a serious threat to society:
“Health issues, social issues, you name it,” she says in response to a question over computers for each child. “But to be staring at screens … we already know that kids who get put in front of TVs instead of interacting, this is not good in all kinds of ways. And it’s just not good for their cognitive, it’s not good for their social development, I mean, that is incredible that kids in kindergarten … We should be moving away from screens at all levels of education, not moving into them.”
However, the World Health Organization suggests otherwise, stating that radiation absorption from base stations vary from 0.002% to 2% of the levels noted in the international exposure guidelines. In fact, humans absorb five times more radiation from FM radio and television than we do from using WiFi.
Anhvinh Doanvo reports for America Blog that animal studies have not shown any connection between WiFi and cancer, even when using levels significantly higher than are produced by WiFi. Scientists have found no negative effects of using WiFi in terms of brain function, body temperature, or other physiological functions.
Doanvo goes on to suggest that although the use of WiFi does promote a sedentary lifestyle, calling the initiatives promoted by the Obama administration that focus on the expansion of computer programming and software education in schools a ‘corporate conspiracy’ is in fact a comment against the furthering of science and society as a whole.
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