Using your phone as an alarm clock can be dangerous? Do you keep your cell phone near your bedside at night? Many people do, but using your phone as an alarm clock could pose an inherent danger to your health, even while you sleep.

Young people are the most likely to use their phones as an alarm clock. Studies suggest that nearly half (48%) of all people aged 16 to 34 use a cell phone alarm, as do 26% of people aged 35 to 54 and around 9% of adults aged 55 and up. And when your smartphone is always within arm’s reach, you’re more likely to give into digital temptation, even though using electronics at night makes it much harder to fall asleep.

Keeping your cell phone close at all times presents a danger to your health

More than just provoking compulsive habits and anxiety, keeping your cell phone so close to your side at all times, day or night, may have very real dangers to your physical health, too. Cell phones are high-level producers of electromagnetic field frequencies or EMFs, and studies show that up 80% of cell phone radiation may penetrate as deep as two inches into your brain when you hold it up to your ear. If you use a cell phone alarm clock, that means you will be exposed to cell phone radiation and EMF fields all night long.

How else can cell phones pose a danger to your health when you keep them by your side 24/7?

Remember: the antenna of your smartphone will emit electromagnetic radiation microwaves while, at the same time, the body of the phone itself releases additional EMFs. Both of these sources can be harmful.

Cell phones cause brain wave disturbances with long-term learning, memory, and sleep issues

Studies have also shown that 70% of all people experience changes in their brain wave patterns when a cell phone is held near their heads. And as a relatively new invention, the long-term effects of cell phones on human health, and especially sleep, remain to be seen. However, evidence already suggests that people who sleep with a phone near their beds have poor quality REM sleep, which in turn is linked with impaired learning and memory capabilities.

Cell phones can be addicting

As if that wasn’t distressing enough, young people with still-developing brains are especially vulnerable to the dangers of smartphones. Some 60% of young people confess to a kind of compulsion when it comes to checking their smartphones throughout the day, and 42% report higher levels of anxiety when forced to disconnect.

Bottom line: Keep your phone out of the bedroom and don’t use it as an alarm clock