Wonderful news from the health front, parents: If your teenager seems permanently connected to a cell phone and runs up astronomical bills that you end up paying because you’re such a sap, this may actually be a good thing.

It may be keeping him or her from smoking.

This, at least, is a theory proposed by an anti-smoking group in England called Action on Smoking and Health.

The theory goes like this: Teenage smoking has declined since the mid-1990s, while cell phone use among young people has skyrocketed.

So more teens may be using cell phones the way they used to use cigarettes: as symbols of rebellion and maturity, for bonding with their pals, etc.

The ASH people in Britain stress there’s no hard evidence to link declining teen smoking with cell phone use.

But ASH director Clive Bates said: “If some teenagers cannot afford to smoke and pay for a (cell) phone, or they find that owning a (cell) phone satisfies the same needs as smoking, they may decide not to smoke.”

Well. It’s certainly an interesting theory.

I tried calling ASH in London, but it turned out to be 1 in the morning over there, a time when the Brits typically engage in any number of annoying activities, such as sleeping.

You have to wonder what’s wrong with those people. Why can’t they put in exhausting 20-hour workdays like we do here?

But John Banzhaf, executive director of ASH in Washington which is not affiliated with the London chapter, said he, too, had heard the theory.

“It does make sense as a good hypothesis,” he said. “The problem is, it’s hard to test it.”

Assuming there’s something to the theory, we could be looking at a profound change in teen-age life.

Instead of seeing knots of sullen, disaffected youths puffing away on street corners across from schools, we might be seeing knots of sullen, disaffected youths on those same corners yakking away on their Nokias.

Oh, wait a minute … my mistake. We’re already seeing that now, aren’t we?