Snapchat boss defends wife Miranda Kerr's phone radiation fears

The founder and chief executive of Snap, Evan Spiegel, has defended his Australian supermodel wife Miranda Kerr's views about the purported risk of wireless signals emitted by smartphones.

Spiegel accused interviewer Josh Constine of "trying to shame my wife" after he was asked about Kerr's fears over electromagnetic field radiation, which is emitted at very low levels by phones and other internet-connected smart devices.

Snap is best known for its premier product Snapchat, the disappearing-message app, which relies on smartphones and Wi-Fi or cellular internet to function.

Kerr, who is also a skin-care entrepreneur, said earlier this year that she takes extensive steps to limit electromagnetic field radiation in her home.

"We have the stickers you put on the back of your phone for radiation," she told US style publication New Beauty. "I have the EMF detector that picks up the waves in the air. I’ve had the whole house checked by a professional who looks for things like EMF waves and things like that."

On stage at Tech Crunch Disrupt, a technology conference in the US, over the weekend, Spiegel took questions about his wife's views as an attempt to mock her.

Evan Spiegel with his then-fiance Miranda Kerr at a party in 2016.Credit: AP

"You trying to shame my wife in an interview?" he asked. He said he did not have a radiation-blocking sticker on his own phone but otherwise declined to say whether he agreed with Kerr's views.

"I haven't had an opportunity to look into it," he said, adding, "You want to support your partner and everything they believe."

"No, I’m just asking your opinion because that is what she told magazines," Constine replied.

A small but growing group of people believe that electromagnetic field radiation can cause a variety of health problems from cancer to dizziness and headaches.

But there is no scientific evidence to support those views.

"To date, despite large number of studies, there is no established evidence that exposure to low level electromagnetic fields causes adverse health effects," the Australian government's Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said.

"There are some studies showing possible health effects but many more studies have not corroborated these results."

Snapchat has struggled to gain users since Facebook added the Stories feature to Instagram, which closely mirrors Snapchat's defining feature of sharing short, self-deleting videos, in 2016.

Instagram last week introduced a new app, Threads, through which users can send videos and messages to a smaller group of their contacts, again mirroring Snapchat.

Spiegel intimated at the Tech Crunch conference that Facebook was suppressing Snap's content on its site.

"It’s hard to say and I, you know, I’d probably be stupid to talk about it here," Spiegel said, in comments Facebook rejected.

He said he did not believe that the current wave of anti-monopoly rhetoric employed by politicians on both sides of US politics, including leading presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren, against companies such as Facebook, would amount to much.

"I mean the history of antitrust would basically say that these investigations last like seven to 10 years or something like that and that basically nothing happens," Spiegel said. "I think a lot can change in the seven to 10 years that this process will take."

Spiegel and Kerr married in 2017 and have a child together, with a second expected.