Sperm quality harmed by frequent mobile phone use

High mobile phone use apparently had no effect on sperm mobility © Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

The more often a man reaches for his mobile phone, the lower the quality of his sperm, according to a Swiss study.

Men who use their mobile phones more than 20 times a day have a fifth fewer sperm per millilitre of ejaculate than men who reach for their phones no more than five times a day, researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and the University of Geneva revealed on Wednesday.

They analysed the sperm of 2,886 men aged 18 to 22 who were recruited between 2005 and 2018, the two institutions announced.

+ Sperm quality of Swiss youth in ‘critical’ condition

This is the world’s largest study on the subject to date, said study co-author Martin Röösli.

However, according to the study, high mobile phone use had no effect on sperm mobility and morphology. The data also suggest that the location of the phone is not associated with poorer sperm. However, Röösli said further studies were needed to make reliable statements on this.

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here. 

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].