8 reasons to ditch your cell phone

I still remember the days when I’d come home from high school, and rush up the stairs to ring a girlfriend, or the nail-biting moments of waiting for the call from a friend to see if he’d pick me up to go out that night. The tension was heightened due to the fact that I didn’t have caller ID or any privacy.

I’ll never forget how my creepy uncle would listen in on my conversation, as if I couldn’t hear his heaving breath like a rumble of thunder over the quiet plains of awkward teen silence.

While phones were exciting for myself and many of my friends back then - we still only had a landline, which was our lifeline.

The first cell phone I saw was back in 1995, and it was almost as big as my head. The internet had just become mainstream, and was considered by some as only a trend that would fizzle out like a backstreet boys hairstyle.

Fast forward to 2025: our past lifelines, like the calorie-rich food our ancestors once hoarded in times of scarcity, have been consumed and replaced with a constant diet of snacking on text messages, beeps, bells, and social media spells.

The euphoric moments we once used to feel when we’d 'reach out and touch somebody’ have now been rendered into a half-conscious melancholic soup sprinkled with the fear of missing out.

Since ditching my cell phone years ago, life hasn’t gotten less convenient - it has actually improved.

Were there jobs I once had that required a cell phone? Yes absolutely.

Did I let the work phone encroach into my personal life? Most definitely.

Will there be more jobs or moments where I might need to use a cell phone? Maybe.

The point is - I’ve learned a lot by venturing beyond the wireless fence monitored by the technocratic game wardens.

They’ve set up a large open space for us so we feel free, just like sheep do on a 1000 acre ranch.

There are limits, which most never discover. If sheep go beyond the pale of the perimeter, they may soon find out who the wolves are.

We can either be sheared or take the sheer chance to escape. Let’s peek past that fence before we scroll over and die, shall we?

8 reasons most of us don't want to get rid of our cell phones

1. “I need my cellphone for work, what can I do?”

If you work in an office, see if the company will install a landline, or ask if they have any Ethernet jacks where you can plug in your data cable.

If you’re a sales rep or told to carry the phone with you everywhere you go, you can seek an electrosensitive diagnosis from your doctor, and submit this to your employer. Electrosensitivity is considered a disability under the ADA (Americans with Disability Act). Each state and province varies, however you still have a right to reasonable accommodation.

Contracts that need to be electronically signed can be offline when using Adobe or DocuSign. Remember - you can still carry the phone on airplane mode, and check in a couple times per day if necessary. When I sold computers in my past life, my best sales calls were always done not from the road, but at the office, in person, or at the bar face to face. Trust is built with eye contact, not texts.

 

2. “I want my children to be able to reach me at all times!”

You can install a corded landline at home, and see if your workplace will give you access to a corded landline, or VOIP (voice over internet) phone. If there is no landline where you work, there is probably a computer that can receive email, Messenger, and/or has conference options such as Zoom or FaceTime. Our old iMac computer can still send and receive texts to other iPhones. You can also install YouMail, which will forward your voicemails to your email when you can’t answer or if you’re away camping somewhere with poor cell reception and can’t access your voicemail.

Note: VOIP and Wi-Fi phone systems are not secure. In case of a country-wide power cut or cyber attack, communication can still work over copper landlines.

If you’re a parent today - chances are your parents didn’t have a phone, and everything worked out. My mom didn’t have a cell phone, and if she was late picking me up, if I had called her from my cell phone (which I didn’t have) guess what? She’d still be late. I remember many a time being bored, waiting, not knowing when I’d get picked up as a child, but guess what? That boredom taught me to enjoy my own company, as I learned how to distract myself with my imagination rather than a screen retarding my future.

“In all the years we spent growing up, nothing was such an emergency that things fell apart because we didn’t carry phones. Occasionally—rarely—undesirable stuff happened. You dealt with it. You walked home. You asked strangers for information or some other assistance, or they asked you. You passed some time as you waited. You got home late. You did without a few, typically unnecessary, things.

Sometimes—rarely— there were hints of danger. But these were in places and times when no one I might have called could have helped. Sometimes you were—and sometimes still are—on your own. Ultimately, both then or now, no one I know died, or suffered terribly, because they lacked a phone.”

~ Mark Oshinskie

I can certainly understand if you’re on a long road trip, and you may need a phone in case you get stranded, etc. You can keep a traveling emergency phone in your glove compartment, in a tin faraday box.

Remember: most other travelers have phones.

3. “I'm concerned that I might miss out on socializing or online invitations.”

If you own a computer, most apps like Zoom, FaceTime, Instagram, TikTok and Google Meet still work. Use a cat 7 shielded ethernet cable for a faster data connection. You can also use a magicJack phone through your ethernet-wired computer.

Cell phones are more computer than phone, and for that reason Bohdanna and I still share a phone that we’ve hardwired so we can still use its apps:

 

There are various adapters that can be used, or if you have an iPhone you can also connect it directly to your Mac computer to access applications and data. This will not only allow you to download / upload files more quickly, you’ll also save money by not having to use the data plan of your cell phone provider.

A note on ethernet connections: When you’re hardwired, you get the full speed that an internet service provider (ISP) offers you, without the lags or downtime. During peak hours ISPs will throttle your service, or make the whole neighborhood share data consumption capability (bandwidth). Throttling happens when you have Wi-Fi.

If you’d like to learn more on how you can harness the full benefits of wired technology, and avoid the pitfalls of wireless so you can optimize your health in 2026, join us in the EMF classroom!

We recently released the third version of our EMF 101 ElectroHealth Rx course:

EMF 101: LEARN MORE

5. “I need a phone for two-factor authentication (2FA)”

Many websites, especially banks require 2FA, which is an added layer of security whereby after you put in your username and password, the site tries to verify your identity with a text, phone call, or a one-time code from a software app like Google Authenticator. Apps like WhatsApp and Telegram will require you to scan a QR code with your phone to initially set up your account. While you will need a phone to scan the QR code, this can also be done while in airplane mode and hardwired. Google Authenticator also works while you are in airplane mode.

We have our bank verify us with a phone call to our landline. Often a landline phone works, and a mobile number isn’t necessary. Some sites can verify you with an additional email. All of these steps can be done without the need for wireless systems.

Personally, I think it’s more of a ploy to get us dependant on our cell phones as a choke point for account access. No phone, no shirt, no shoes, no service.

Each time I’m on the line with a company like the bank, I tell them I don’t have a cell phone to verify. Guess what? They still want my money, and each time I’ve found workarounds.

 

6. “I don't want to lose all my pictures and videos that are stored on my phone.”

Like it or not, most of your pictures are probably uploaded to the cloud already, and can be accessed from any computer. You can even access them on a public computer (not recommended) if you know your password. You can’t trust those nosy librarians - they love romantic fantasy novels too much to not be interested in your steamy pictures.

7. “I use my phone camera all the time.”

Good digital cameras are very affordable now, with compact models available and are often more scratch resistant than cell phones. Plus, do you know how much easier it is to literally stick the memory card of the camera into the computer to download your photos, rather than waiting for the internet clouds to gather?

It’s literally instantaneous.

 

8. “I use my cell phone as my alarm clock.”

Get an alarm clock. Duh! Get one that is battery-powered with a red-lit background, so you don’t have to be exposed to dirty electricity and wreck your melatonin levels while you sleep.

Here are some more ways we like to mitigate our light environment in our house, so we can live more in tune with our ancestors: Using red light to reduce EMF

Why should you consider ditching your cell phone plan? 

If you absolutely need your phone, we understand. However, first you may want to consider the health risks.

Since informed consent has been in short supply these past five years, or past hundred…we thought we’d give you a good dose:

The following information is sourced from Arthur Firstenberg’s article....:

“I don’t get a headache from my cell phone. Can it be that bad?” 

Brain tissue has no pain receptors, so we don’t feel the injury. Even a headache doesn’t tell you what’s happening inside your head. Neurosurgeon Leif Salford and colleagues in Sweden found that a single two-hour exposure to a cell phone permanently destroys up to two percent of a rat’s brain cells.4 Superficially the rats are fine, but two percent of their brain is gone. The experiments gave similar results even when the exposure level was reduced a hundredfold. And in experiments on the blood-brain barrier, they reduced the exposure level ten thousandfold and found that damage to the blood-brain barrier was worse when the exposure level was reduced.

That means that holding the phone away from your head does not protect you. It means that if you use a Bluetooth headset, which emits only 2.5 milliwatts, you are doing more damage to yourself than if you hold the phone to your head. The blood-brain barrier keeps heavy metals and toxic chemicals out of your brain and maintains the brain at constant pressure. Too much intracranial pressure can lead to a stroke.

What do the stroke statistics tell us?

The incidence of stroke overall is steady or declining but it is rising in adults younger than 50, and shockingly so in very young adults. A Danish study published in 2016 examined the rate of strokes in people aged 15 to 30. The annual number of strokes in that age group in Denmark rose 50 percent between 1994 and 2012, and the annual number of transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes) in that age group tripled.

How fast does the damage to the blood-brain barrier happen? 

Leakage of the blood-brain barrier is detectable within two minutes of exposure and probably begins within seconds.

I’m confused. Which is safer, low power or high power?

Neither. The higher the power, the more heat. The lower the power, the more leakage of the blood-brain barrier. The higher the power, the more your metabolism is disturbed. 

The lower the power, the more calcium leaks out of your cells. Microwave radiation injures the body in many different ways. It depends on which effect you are looking at.

Isn’t a cell phone safer when it is held more than six inches away from your head? What about the near field plume?

There is no such thing as a near field “plume.” The near field is simply the region near a source of radiation where the electric field is separate from the magnetic field and the strength of either cannot be exactly predicted. There is no sharp boundary between near field and far field and the fundamental properties of the radiation do not change.

What about those shielding products that you stick on one side of your phone to block the radiation in the direction of your brain?

The people who designed those products forgot that your arm, being an electrical conductor, is also an antenna. When you hold a cell phone in your hand, your whole arm, and not just the cell phone, becomes a radio transmitter that sends and receives the cell phone signal and conducts it into the rest of your body. Putting reflective material on one side of the phone doesn’t do very much. To the extent that it does anything, it makes the phone work harder and actually increases the amount of radiation instead of decreasing it. The designers of those products forgot to test them on phones that someone was actually holding.

Is a cell phone safe if I use a wired headset?

In 2000, testing by Consumers’ Association in the UK showed that using a wired headset actually tripled the radiation to the brain. Instead of protecting the user, the wire conducts the radiation from the cell phone directly into the user’s ear and brain. In addition, phones operate at greater power and emit more radiation when held below the level of the head. And if you operate one while it is in your pocket, it is irradiating your hip, colon, and reproductive organs while the headset is irradiating your brain.

Is it safe to keep a cell phone in my pocket when I’m not using it?

That’s what most people do. And total hip replacements have skyrocketed. Between 2000 and 2010 the number of annual hip replacements in the U.S. more than doubled, and the rate of hip replacements among people aged 45-54 more than tripled.

Rates of colon cancer among Americans aged 20-54, which had been declining for decades, began to rise in 1997 when widespread cell phone use began. The rise has been steepest and began earliest (1995) in people aged 20-29: the rate of colon cancer in young men and women aged 20-29 doubled between 1995 and 2013.

Rates of prostate cancer have been rising worldwide since 1997. The number of cases of prostate cancer among Swedish men aged 50-59 was stable for decades until 1996 and rose ninefold between 1997 and 2004. The incidence of metastatic prostate cancer among American men under 55 increased 62% between 2004 and 2013, and nearly doubled for men aged 55-69 during the same period.

Several studies have found that men who keep their cell phones on standby in their pocket or on their belt lower their sperm count by up to 30 percent. A study conducted from 2003 to 2013 found that young men now had lower sperm counts than their elders, and that people born between 1990 and 1995 had on average 40 percent lower sperm counts than men born earlier. Almost every study that has been conducted has found a direct relationship between cell phone use and sperm count, motility, and/or morphology.

Is it safe for women to keep a cell phone in their bra?

Women in their twenties and thirties who keep their cell phones in their bras are getting a distinctive type of breast cancer directly underneath where they keep their phones.

How far does the radiation from my cell phone travel?

The signal goes out forever. It does not just travel to the nearest cell tower, and it does not travel in only that direction. It goes on forever, in all directions, as long as there are no hills or objects in the way. It pollutes your entire neighborhood and it travels upward to the sun and stars. It just keeps on going.

Those few people who owned an analog cell phone back in 1996 may remember how far apart cell towers used to be. As long as there were no hills in the way, you used to be able to get a signal from 90 miles away. The only reason cell towers have to be so close together today is because a single tower can only serve a limited number of people. The more users, the more towers have to be built. Also the more bandwidth, the more towers have to be built: using cell phones as computers and not just phones means there have to be a lot more towers. That, and the fact that digital signals are more subject to interference than analog signals. But the radiation still goes on forever.

Isn’t it my choice? The radiation is out there anyway, so why shouldn’t I use it? 

I need my cell phone.

There are so many cell towers everywhere today that it is easy to assume you are not making anything worse when you make a cell phone call—that all you are doing is tapping into what’s already out there, like putting one more automobile onto an interstate highway that has already been built.

That is an illusion. When everyone’s phone is turned off, the cell towers are operating at minimal power on one setup channel that has to broadcast at all times in case someone wants to make a call. Things are a little more complex today because more frequencies are in use but that is the basic situation.

What happens when you turn on your phone and make a call is that the nearest cell tower has to turn on a voice channel just for you, which also broadcasts in every direction and also pollutes the whole neighborhood and goes on forever out into the universe. If you have a smart phone and use the Internet the cell tower also opens up a data channel just for you. And in order for you to reach the person you are calling, the cell tower nearest to him or her also has to open up a channel just for that person and send radiation in all directions and that person has to answer their phone and send more radiation in all directions. And on weekdays during the evening commute, and all day Saturday and Sunday, when everyone in the world is on their phone, every cell tower has hundreds of channels operating on hundreds of frequencies and emits much more radiation than late at night when everyone is off their phone. When your phone is off, multiple cell towers are quieter. When you are using your phone, you are polluting your own and at least one other person’s neighborhood.

I only keep my phone for emergencies when I travel. That has minimal impact, right? 

The other thing that happens when you make a call is you are demanding service. When you turn on your phone in a remote location where cell phone service is poor or non-existent, your provider registers that as a request for service. If it gets enough requests for service in that location, it will build a cell tower there. Even in a city, when more people make calls at the same time than there is capacity for in the nearest tower, or when everyone starts using more bandwidth or gets more apps than the tower can handle, calls start to be dropped, each dropped call is registered as a request for service, and soon your city has applications for even more cell towers to handle the increased traffic.

I got sick from a smart phone. My flip phone is much safer, right?

Smart phones didn’t come among us until 2004. But the first wave of digital, voice-only cell towers in the United States in 1996 killed at least ten thousand people in a matter of months,17 and millions more from diabetes, heart disease, and cancer in the succeeding years.

How much radiation does a cell phone emit, compared to what exists in nature? 

If Neil Armstrong had brought a cell phone to the moon in 1969, it would have appeared from earth to be the brightest object in the universe in the microwave spectrum. In the daytime, the sun would have been brighter, but at night, the cell phone would have outshone every star.

There is a reason cell phones are outlawed in Green Bank, West Virginia: even a single cell phone, even from miles away, would blind the radio astronomers there and make it impossible for them to see the stars. Astronomers measure radio waves in units called janskys. A typical star shines at 10 to 100 janskys. The Sun shines at about 500,000 janskys. When you hold a cell phone against your head, you are pumping energy at the rate of about 100,000,000,000,000 janskys into your brain.

How does that compare to radiation from a cell tower?

Suppose there is a 2,000-watt cell tower two blocks from your house. The part of your brain next to a cell phone is absorbing up to one hundred thousand times as much radiation from the phone as it is from the tower.

Are the FCC’s exposure limits the same for cell phones and cell towers?

No. Cell phones are exempt from the limits imposed on cell towers. The FCC measures exposure in milliwatts per square centimeter. Depending on frequency, the FCC’s limit for whole body exposure to radiation from distant sources is about one milliwatt per square centimeter (1 mW/cm²).

The limit for partial body exposure to a cell phone is approximately 20 mW/cm² (for the brain), which assumes the phone is held at least one and a half centimeters away from your head. It is 50 mW/cm² (for the hands, wrists and ears). If you hold the phone flush against your head, like most people do, or tightly between your head and your shoulder, the exposure to the brain can approach 50 mW/cm² also.

Who set the exposure limits?

A radar scientist named Herman Schwan who was brought to the United States from Germany after World War II as part of Project Paperclip. He made some assumptions about the rate at which the human body is capable of getting rid of heat, and on that basis he estimated that the body could safely absorb an amount of radiation equal to 100 mW/cm². His assumptions were soon proven wrong, since experimental animals died within minutes when exposed to that much radiation. So over the years, the safe level was reduced first to 10 mW/cm² and later to the current limit of 1 mW/cm².

Have these assumptions proven correct?

No. A 1° C rise in temperature is usually considered a fever. And although the brain as a whole is heated less than 1° C by a cell phone, the absorption is not uniform. DNA, for example, resonantly absorbs microwave radiation. In experiments done at the Food and Drug Administra­tion during the 1980s, DNA absorbed 400 times as much radiation as expected. 

Research done at the Max Planck Institute in Germany in 2006 found that brain synapses may be resonantly heated by up to 100° C while the brain as a whole is heated by only 1° C.

What is the cost of having a stroke?

According to the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, the average cost of care in 2013 for a patient up to 90 days after a stroke was $15,000 USD. Total indirect costs from lost productivity are estimated at $15 million per year.

A 2021 study24 by The Journal of Medicine & Life found that the average per patient per year cost was highest in the US at $59,900.

 

While there are many factors that could cause a stroke, such as heavy metals from injections - it’s important to remember that anytime we put metal in a microwave, it lights up. I learned that lesson at age 10 when I put a Klondike Bar into the microwave. My instant gratifcation had backfired, but at least I could see the sparks. If we can’t wait for our collective dreams to thaw and materialize, trampling each other like blinded sheep, the cream of humanity will be milked for someone else’s dessert.

The wolves are watching, but we’ve forgotten who they are because they’re dressed in white fuzzy fur that makes us feel good. They tell us we can have another planet if we just link our brains to the cloud. They tell us to lock up other blacksheep crossing our borders to save our hide and protect our family. They stoke us with hope because we’ve forgotten how to cope.

Don’t hope. Hop over the fence like a wolf.

We are more powerful than we know.