Of all the “waves” we live with — microwaves, radio waves, UV waves — Wi-Fi is probably the most contentious. Because no matter how many times scientists say Wi-Fi is safe, there’s always the lingering doubt that maybe we just don’t know yet — a doubt fueled by the legitimate fact that, while radio and TV have been around for decades, Wi-Fi, invented in 1997, is relatively new. What if the damage just hasn’t had time to show?
Fair question. As parents, we may have thrown in the towel and accepted the fact that we’re a generation of guinea pigs. But most of us wouldn’t say the same thing about our kids. If Wi-Fi is dangerous for our little ones, we want to know. We have a right to know. So let’s get to the bottom of it. Is Wi-Fi as dangerous for our small children and infants as other hidden household hazards?
We’ll start with a brief look at how Wi-Fi works and wrap up with some simple steps you can take to make your home Wi-Fi setup even safer for your 13-and-unders.
Did You Know? Wi-Fi, which stands for “wireless fidelity,” is a trademarked name that belongs to the Wi-Fi Alliance, which is responsible for setting standards for products that use Wi-Fi.
How Wi-Fi Works
We take Wi-Fi for granted literally every minute of the day, but it’s actually a mind-bending invention. Wi-Fi works with radio waves, like our TVs, cellphones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, home security cameras, and Bluetooth headsets. The waves are invisible, but you can picture the speed of a Wi-Fi wave.
Imagine an ocean wave. It comes, it crests, and then breaks. Maybe the whole process takes about seven or eight seconds, and then it repeats.
Now take an everyday 2.4 GHz (gigahertz) or 5 GHz router. The waves from the router are smacking against our cellphones and laptops a billion times per second! Try wrapping your head around that number. But that’s how Wi-Fi works — 24/7, in our homes, airports, businesses, and city streets.
Routers “pitch” information through the air — in bundles of invisible electricity — into the “mitts” of our devices. Our devices whip the data back — an unending supersonic game of catch.
That’s Wi-Fi in a nutshell: mind-bogglingly quick beams of energy shooting back and forth from so many devices at once that our cities and homes have become a virtual data soup.
Considering how ubiquitous Wi-Fi is and how many Wi-Fi-enabled products there are on the shelves, Wi-Fi can’t really be dangerous, can it? I mean, they must have tested it.
Actually, there are studies on the effects of Wi-Fi on humans, but the results are conclusively inconclusive.
FYI: While TV towers and satellites can beam radio waves from great distances, the maximum reach of an indoor home router is about 150 feet.
Is Home Wi-Fi Dangerous?
Short answer: We don’t know if Wi-Fi in the home is harmful. According to most scientists, it probably isn’t. Here’s why.
Wi-Fi waves, which are in the microwave band, are about 100,000 times weaker than the waves generated by microwave ovens. The minimal radiation they do emit disperses significantly at a distance of over three feet. So unless you’re camped out in front of your router, the dose you’re getting zapped with is infinitesimally weak.
In fact, you would have to be sitting with your ear pressed up against your router for a year streaming video nonstop to absorb the amount of radiation emitted by a mere 20-minute phone conversation on a cellphone.1
The other thing to consider is how often our routers are actually emitting energy. According to University Pennsylvania bioengineering professor Kenneth Foster, it isn’t often at all. Our routers are mostly just sitting there, like an Amazon Echo, waiting to be useful. They’re actively transmitting just 0.1 percent of the time.2
Pro Tip: Smart devices like the Amazon Echo are mostly passive listeners, but they do record our conversations, and sometimes that can lead to smart home disasters.
For all those reasons, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that Wi-Fi waves are officially safe for humans with the caveat that “some gaps in knowledge about biological effects exist and need further research.”3 The WHO didn’t pull their verdict out of thin air. It analyzed over 25,000 scientific papers, representing 30 years of research.
So that’s generally good news for all of us who have invested in smart home automation, wireless home security systems, and a host of other Wi-Fi-dependent technology, like smart locks, baby monitors, and wireless earphones. Wi-Fi, the science says, should be fine — for adults.
But what about our kids, with their thinner skulls and more absorbent brains?
Did You Know? To produce the same amount of radiation emitted by a single cell phone, you’d need to tie 20 laptops and two routers together.
What You Can Do to Protect Your Kids From Wi-Fi
In 1989, the “New York Times” reported on a 20-year study that showed that kids in Denver living near an electrical substation were twice as likely to develop cancer as kids who didn’t.4 Shocked by the results, a number of scientists set out to disprove it. They couldn’t.
The reason I’m citing this study isn’t to compare exposure to high-voltage electric and magnetic fields to household Wi-Fi dangers. There’s no comparison. As we’ve seen, routers don’t emit dangerous levels of radiation.
However, when we talk about the dangers of Wi-Fi, we’re mostly thinking of adults. Children, it has been proven, are more susceptible to the effects of radiation, whether it’s coming from mobile phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, or iPads.
Here’s what you can do to mitigate that exposure.
1. Keep Phones Out of Their Hands
This is Kids Safety 101. We’ve seen that a mobile device like a mobile phone emits orders of magnitude more radiation than a router. So no phones until they’re over the age of 13, per Bill Gates.
2. Place Baby Monitors at Least Three Feet Away From Your Infant
Our IoT (Internet of Things) equipment is not likely harmful, but because younger brains do absorb more radiation, keep them away from sleeping babies.
3. Wire Your Home Computers
This may not be convenient for every family, but if you’ve got Ethernet sockets near your desks, buy cables and use them. This will cut down on Wi-Fi transmissions.
4. Turn Off Your Router at Night
If you switch your router off at night, you’re automatically cutting down on eight to 10 hours of emissions. The only downside to going cold turkey is that any smart devices running over Wi-Fi will be sleeping too.
FYI: In 2005, there were roughly 1 billion internet users in the world. Today there are close to 5.3 billion.5
Final Thoughts
I think most of us have come to terms with the fact that Wi-Fi is here to stay. In fact, many of us (yours truly) wouldn’t know what to do if we couldn’t scroll through our emails one more time before bed or wake up with the news.
Thankfully, the science says there’s nothing wrong with that. Wi-Fi is innocent until proven guilty.
Though there’s no direct evidence that exposure to Wi-Fi is dangerous for small children and infants, we do know that they are more susceptible to microwaves. So, while we adults may have nothing to worry about, limiting our little ones’ exposure until their growing bodies are more resilient is an idea I believe most scientists would fully recommend.
