Why are mobiles so popular? Because people love to talk to each other. And it is easier with a mobile phone. People think mobile phones are fun and useful. In countries like Russia and China, people use mobile phones in places where there is no ordinary telephone. Business people use mobiles when they’re travelling. In some countries, like Japan, many people use their mobile phones to send e-mail messages and access the Internet. They use a new kind of mobile phone called ‘i-mode’. You can even use a mobile phone to listen to music.

Mobile phones are very fashionable with teenagers. Parents buy mobile phones for their children. They can call home if they are in trouble and need help. So they feel safer. But teenagers mostly use them to keep in touch with their friends or play simple computer games. It’s cool to be the owner of a small, expensive mobile! As eighteen-year-old Londoner Rosie Farrer says, ‘Before, girls of my age smoked cigarettes to look good. Now we have mobiles!’ Rosie’s right. Research shows that teenage owners of mobile phones smoke less! Parents and schools are happy that teenagers are safer and smoke less. But they are worried about the possible problems of mobile phones.

There are now 750 million mobile phone users around the world. This number will probably grow to 1.4 billion in five years’ time. Many people dislike them. They hate it when the businessman opposite them on the train has a loud conversation on his phone. Or when mobile phones ring in a café or restaurant.

But there is a much more serious problem. We are not sure that mobiles are completely safe. It’s possible that mobiles can heat up the brain because we hold the phone so close to our head. Scientists fear that mobiles can perhaps be bad for your memory and even give you cancer. Because of these fears, some people use a ‘handsfree’ mobile – a phone that you needn’t hold to your ear. But it is possible that these are more dangerous. We just don’t know and many parents don’t give their younger children mobiles for this reason.

So why do we use mobiles when we aren’t sure they’re safe? Because mobiles are a lot of fun and very useful, we choose to forget the possible dangers. We choose to believe that mobiles are safe. Let’s hope we’re right!