The danger of charging your phone under your pillow isn't radiation
The old fear about cell phone radiation causing cancer is an overblown concern, but there are other dangers when you tuck a charging phone under your pillow.
The World Health Organization's study concluded that sleeping with a phone under the pillow doesn't significantly increase the risk of cancer. However, this habit can lead to overheating and potential fire hazards. When a phone is charging and under a pillow, the heat generated by the battery has nowhere to go, causing the device to become hotter than usual.
This can damage the phone's battery, shorten its lifespan, and in rare cases, cause a fire. Lithium-ion batteries, which power most smartphones, release heat during charging and require proper ventilation to dissipate safely. Placing a phone on a hard, flat, and well-ventilated surface when charging can help prevent overheating and extend the device's life.
Using certified chargers and avoiding uncertified ones also reduces the risk of overheating. While cell phones do emit non-ionizing radiofrequency radiation, which is generally considered safe, the primary concern with sleeping with a phone under the pillow is fire risk, not radiation.
Written by urgent.news from Engadget's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
