Even as state after state bans cell phones in schools and social media sites are being sued for addicting children to their platforms, America’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is facing a wrath of criticism for tying the engineering of cell phones to medical ills. 

Mr. Kennedy asserted in an interview last week that electromagnetic radiation, which is emitted when cell phones are used, plays a damaging role in children’s physical health, particularly when they are exposed to it 24 hours a day via their devices. 

“Electromagnetic radiation has been shown to do neurological damage to kids when it’s around them all day and to cause cellular damage and even cancer,” Mr. Kennedy insisted in the interview.

Nine states — Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia — with the support of teachers’ unions have passed statewide policies that ban or restrict cell phone use in classrooms and elsewhere in schools. Several more are working on legislation aimed at addressing what many are calling a mental health crisis among America’s youth.

“I am not going to compromise our children’s health, which means I am fighting for a full all day long bell-to-bell distraction-free environment,” New York’s Governor, Kathy Hochul, said at a recent panel to push legislation calling for a statewide ban on cell phones and smartwatches in schools. 

The frenzy to get cell phones out of school erupted last year after social scientist Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, lent credence to the suspicions of millions of parents that phones are harming children. Suggesting cellular devices feed social media addiction comparable to spoons and lighters feeding heroin dependency, Mr. Haidt demonstrated a range of mental health impacts, including spikes in rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide, traceable to the mini-computers in everyone’s pocket.

While Mr. Haidt’s book sparked a furious backlash among parents, 33 state attorneys general already were taking action. They filed a joint lawsuit against Facebook parent Meta in late 2023 claiming willful harm by the social media giant. Another 46 attorneys general filed amicus briefs against TikTok. 

“Meta must be held accountable for its irresponsible and damaging actions,” Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, said when the lawsuit was filed. “By violating consumer protection laws and federal privacy standards, they’ve put the mental health and well-being of an entire generation at risk.” 

Mr. Kennedy has faced repeated criticism over the years for some of his more unorthodox health claims, most pointedly his concerns that vaccine bundles given to children can cause autism, a widely discredited allegation that has seen a resurgence since he was tapped to lead Health and Human Services. Some of his other causes, including warnings about the carcinogenic effect of artificial food dyes and the risks to brain development from heavy metals in baby formula, have been championed by health conscious consumers although occasionally downplayed by some public health experts. 

After his remarks about cell phone radiation, Mr. Kennedy’s critics took to press outlets to bat down his claims, citing electrical engineering studies and government websites. Among them was HHS’s own National Cancer Institute, which states that non-ionizing radiation — the low-end of the electromagnetic spectrum associated with radiowaves and electricity as well as microwave and cell phone radiation — does not cause cancer. 

Nonetheless, Environmental Health Trust, which studies the effects of cellular radiation on human health and advocates for the removal of high EMF-emitting cell towers near population centers, says numerous scientific studies indicate that wireless radiation can cause a variety of harmful effects, including memory loss, headaches, ADHD, interrupted sleep, and other disorders associated with disruptive classroom behavior — even at exposure levels that meet government wireless radiation limits. 

The trust adds that government agencies like the Federal Communications Commission have not updated safety guidelines on cell phones since 1996, in the era of lower-spectrum 2G and 3G when cell phones were in use a fraction of the time and by a fraction of the people now using them. 

As of March 2025, 1,464 civil cases have been filed claiming addiction to social media, the group’s general counsel, Joe Sandri, told The New York Sun. Several of those cases contain extensive information about the medical, scientific, and environmental harms, including cases of brain tumors caused by non-ionizing radiation. 

Whether or not a causal correlation has been established between cell phone radiation and physiological or neurological disorders in children, the move to eliminate cell phones in the classroom has widespread support among many parents and teachers who say that constant attention to digital screens is harming children’s ability to learn, communicate, and understand social cues. A Pew Research study in 2024 found that 68 percent of respondents supported a ban on cell phones in the classroom.  

Mr. Kennedy, who recently traveled with Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, to a high school, said he observed beneficial effects on learning and socialization in the cell phone-free classrooms. 

“Cell phone use and social media use on cell phones has been directly connected with depression, with poor performacne in schools, with suicidal ideation, with substance abuse,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s a much healthier environment when kids are not using cell phones in schools.”