 I've addressed how cell phones may affect brain function and how both cell phones and Wi-Fi may affect male fertility, but what about the effects of Wi-Fi on brain functioning? The possible existence of cognitive effects in these kinds of radiofrequency energies has been one of the more contentious discussions in the forever contentious issue of whether exposure has any health consequences whatsoever. Wi-Fi has been called an uncontrolled global experiment on the health of humankind. The effects of radiofrequency fields gained new urgency, as the World Health Organization officially declared cell phone radiation to be a possible human carcinogen based on brain tumor risks. But their decision has no direct relevance to the possible health effects of Wi-Fi, since the exposures are so much different. We may absorb 100 times less radiation in a typical exposure to Wi-Fi compared to cell phones. But you don't know if there are effects until you put it to the test. Can Wi-Fi affect brain function? To date, more than 100 studies have been published on the effects of these kinds of emissions on human brain wave patterns as measured by EEG, while the results are mixed, a fairly consistent finding is that even a short duration of exposure to the head can produce small but statistically significant changes in the EEG of resting and sleeping subjects. This effect is acknowledged by most health agencies, but the question is, what do you do with that information? For example, a review sponsored by the European Governing Body concluded that the relevance of such small changes remains unclear, and we don't even know how it's happening at all. Some have suggested it's an artifact of the test, and that EEG wires may be acting like antennas that carry the wave straight to the brain, in effect, contributing to the changes that it's been set up to measure. Either way, you don't see the kind of neurocognitive effects with Wi-Fi exposure that you do with cell phones. For example, no measurable effects were found on reaction time or sustained attention. Now this was testing 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, but if anything, we would expect even lower levels of exposure from the newer 5GHz Wi-Fi due to the shallower penetration depth. Although more accurately, a person who spends hours a day glued to a smartphone or tablet may very well experience all sorts of neurocognitive effects, but from the use of this technology, not from the radiation. It's interesting, there's a large literature out there about the health implications of these new technologies for young people, but it's about the content. For example, never before in history has such sexually explicit material been indiscriminately available to youth, and we need to ask ourselves as a society what effect this may be having. Girls and boys are being exposed to a colossal amount of digital media on smartphones, which makes access to pornographic material all too easy, cheap, and anonymous. No longer confined to homes and bedrooms, young people can now watch pornography in school, in public just a touch of a button away, and researchers only begun cataloging the effects this may have on young people's attitudes and behaviors. Most college students these days report seeing online pornography as a minor before age 18, of 1,500 high school boys surveyed, the vast majority admit to accessing web porn, nearly one in three for more than an hour at a time. What is that teaching our next generation of men? Researchers sat through and content coded 400 videos from mainstream porn sites and more than a third of the videos displayed acts of physical violence against women, such as gagging or choking. Yeah, but does watching such material lead to sexually aggressive behaviors? 1,510 to 15-year-olds were followed for years to see if there was a link between intentional exposure to such material and later sexually aggressive behaviors such as sexual assault. They found that exposure to violent porn over time predicted an almost six-fold increase in the odds of self-reported sexual aggression. The question, of course, though, is, which came first, right? A major difficulty with interpreting this kind of research is, you know, that teens predisposed to that kind of behavior, of course the ones who may be drawn to that material in the first place, so no cause and effect link can be established. All we can do as parents is closely monitor what our children are doing to the best of our abilities.