Parents have become significantly more willing to allow their children to own a mobile phone in the past year, a poll for The Times has found.

Widespread acceptance of the technology is allaying the health fears and concerns over bullying and inappropriate use that previously dominated debate on children's use of mobile phones, a Populus poll found.

The number of concerned consumers — those who take ethical concerns into account when buying — who believe it is acceptable to allow a child younger than 12 to own a mobile phone has increased by more than a third in the past year.

About 43 per cent of concerned consumers said that children should be allowed to have their own mobile phone before the age of 12, with 15 per cent believing children should be allowed one before the age of 10.

David Lourie, an analyst at Good Business, the ethical consultancy, said the findings showed that consumers are becoming more trustworthy of new technology as it enters the mainstream. But he warned that telecom companies and handset-makers should not interpret less anxiety among consumers as a signal that they have won the battle over health scares and safety fears.

He said: “When mobile phones become part of people's lives — 97 per cent of concerned consumers own a mobile phone - they become more trusting, so you see a decline in consumer concern. There is an opportunity as consumer trust returns more generally, for mobile phone retailers and operators to take a step forward on these issues. But there is a danger that as concerns drop away, companies think they do not need to worry about it any more. Concerns are softening a bit, but not going away — there is still particular concern about child safety.”

He added: “Think of other sectors, such as child labour in the fashion industry, and you see how a problem that everybody thought had been cleaned up, can return with a vengeance. You just need one high-profile case and suddenly you're back where you started in consumers' minds.”

All of the telephone operators enjoyed an improvement in how their environmental and social track records were rated, though retailers such as Carphone Warehouse, Phones4u and The Link are still not trusted to sell the best mobile phone package.

Carphone Warehouse abandoned commission for its salesmen this month to dispel any suggestion that staff were mis-selling telephones or contracts. Andrew Harrison, chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, said at the time: “We want to stand out in this market, to be the people who you know are going to be on your side.”

For the first time, children's safety is no longer the dominant concern for ethically aware consumers. Two years ago, 41 per cent of concerned consumers identified it as the most important issue surrounding mobile phone use. This year, only 32 per cent identified it as their top concern, the same proportion that said health risks, including the siting of mobile telephone masts, was their top concern.

The decline in concern surrounding children's safety coincides with a declining amount of media coverage devoted to bullying using mobile phones. For example, the phrase “happy slapping”, a form of bullying in which a child is suddenly attacked or struck while being filmed on a mobile phone, has appeared only 29 times in British newspapers in the past three months, against 76 in the same period last year.

Meanwhile the environmental impact of mobile phone use is slowly creeping up the agenda. Two years ago, only 11 per cent of concerned consumers regarded the environment as the most important issue around mobile phone use, compared with 18 per cent now.

Mr Lourie said this reflected a growing awareness of the environmental consequences of an “upgrade culture”, where consumers change handsets regularly. Many retailers now operate recycling schemes for old handsets but Mr Lourie added that manufacturers were under pressure to make them more recyclable — for example, by making it easier for them to be broken down into their parts.

Almost 30 per cent of concerned consumers who had recently upgraded their mobile phones had recycled the handset, while no respondent had thrown a handset away. Most either kept the old handset or gave it to a friend or family member.

“The big issue for handset makers is how they can factor recycling into the design of the products, rather than considering it as an afterthought. This is what some people call "cradle to cradle' design,” Mr Lourie said.

Cradle to cradle design takes into account the post-use life of a product, eliminating the need for landfill and avoiding “downcycling”, where higher-grade materials are recycled into lower-grade materials.

Meanwhile, the French Government this week said that it was to ban mobile phones from French primary schools because of safety fears. It will also introduce measures requiring manufacturers to make mobiles that work with hands-free sets, to reduce exposure to microwave radiation.

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