Mobile phone use has not replaced smoking in adolescence

Abstract

EDITOR—Charlton and Bates hypothesised that the fall in smoking and the rise in ownership of mobile phones among adolescents in the late 1990s were related.1 Mobile phones were argued to be competition to cigarettes by competing for the spending money that is scarce in adolescence. We tested this hypothesis in Finnish adolescents. We collected cross sectional data in February 2001 from nationally representative samples of 14, 16, and 18 year old Finns by using a self administered structured mailed questionnaire (adolescent …