The iPhone may cause broken bones and concussions. Yes, I’m leaving out a few in-between steps there.
So let me start over: Craig Palsson, a graduate student in the Yale economics department, argues in a new paper that the expansion of the 3G cellphone network led to more widespread adoption of the iPhone, which led to parents who discovered new apps and continual email on their cellphone; which led to parents who paid attention to their new toys at playgrounds and not necessarily to their small children; which led to 10 percent more accidents for those children from 2005 to 2012, including broken bones and concussions.
The paper assembled data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, run by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The government does not collect any information from the phone, but instead relies on a sample of hospital emergency room visits involving consumer products.
The overall finding does not hold for children who are 6 and up. Presumably these are the children who require less monitoring. Or maybe older children simply ignore constant monitoring at the playground.
[For more of this story, written by Dean Karlan, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...p;abt=0002&abg=1]
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