LAUREN GILGUNN may be just eight but already she owns her first mobile phone. She was given the Nokia for her birthday in July, and has been happily texting and chatting away with her friends ever since.

But after yesterday’s warning from the National Radiological Protection Board about children and mobile phones, Lauren is likely to be parted from her beloved mobile, much to her disappointment.

Her mother, Debbie Copping, 28, of Camden, North London, now plans to take the handset away. “I had no idea,” she said. “If in ten years these kids start getting ill because of their phones it would be awful. I’d never forgive myself.”

Lauren is not alone in having her own mobile phone. For many children the combination of loud ringtones, flashing screens, games and mobile cameras is irresistible. “My phone’s great,” said Lauren, proudly holding it aloft. “I like playing games on it and writing text messages to my friends.”

Several of her classmates at Carlton Primary School in Camden also own mobiles and often ring each other after school hours. “Some of my friends have mobiles,” said Lauren. “And some of them have had several. I like being able to talk to them when they’re not with me.”

The school operates a strict no-phones policy, but that doesn’t stop children from trying to bring them in occasionally. “You can tell when they line up in the morning,” Jacki Phelan, the deputy head teacher, said. “They know they have something they shouldn’t have, and we take the mobiles away from them and give them back to their parents at the end of the day.” However, Ms Phelan emphasised that it was only on very rare occasions that the children brought their phones into class, but added that the ban existed for good reasons.

“If we allow phones they could disrupt classes, leave their parents with huge bills to pay and then there are health concerns as well,” she said.

Some pupils are allowed phones at the end of the day so they can call their parents to tell them they are on their way home.

“It can be practical,” Ms Phelan said. “If children are doing an after-school club and need to tell their parents, for example, then that’s OK.”

At precisely 3.30pm more than 400 children begin to stream through the gates of Carlton Primary School. It is then that the handsets emerge, as several older children start making calls.

Sue Woolmer’s son Mark, 10, has his own phone, which he uses to call his brothers Jack, 9, and Matt, 14. “The warnings about mobile phones do worry me,” Mrs Woolmer, 40, of Highgate, said. “But my sons don’t use the mobile phones very much. I would think girls use them much more.”

However, other parents were less concerned about the potential health risks.

David Lewes, of Gospel Oak, will not let his son use a mobile until he is older, but rejects claims that they can damage health. “I don’t believe it myself,” he said.

“I won’t let my son have one because he doesn’t need one, but I don’t think it shrivels your brain or anything like that.”

GENERATION TEXT

25 per cent of 11 to 14-year-olds pay for all their mobile phone calls

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