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Japanese teens addicted to cellphones: survey

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-26 16:20

TOKYO – Mobile phones are taking centre stage in the lives of Japanese teenagers, who often send or receive dozens of emails a day while eating, attending school or even taking a bath, according to a survey.

Mobile phones are taking centre stage in the lives of Japanese teenagers, who often send or receive dozens of emails a day while eating, attending school or even taking a bath, according to survey. [Agencies]

Around 46 percent of middle school students aged 13 to 14 and 96 percent of high school students aged 16 to 17 carry a mobile telephone, the research shows. One in four school children aged 11 to 12 also has one.

They use their phones to email friends, read books, listen to music and surf the Internet, as well as for chatting.

Related readings:  Risks of mobile phone addiction  Doctors warn of rash from mobile phone use  Cellphone users grow record 9.46 million in Feb.  30% cellphone users to read through handsets

One in five middle school students sends or receives 50 or more emails on his or her phone each day, according to the education ministry survey of more than 10,000 children, which was published late Wednesday.

Of these students, seven percent said they sent email more than 100 times a day.

One quarter of the middle school students use a mobile during mealtimes while 10 percent use them when in the bath. Among the high school students, 18 percent use their phones during class.

"Some children are emailing massively," said education ministry official Hiroyuki Mantani.

"Some parents are not fully aware of the dangers," he said, urging proper education on using Internet-capable phones.

The wide availability of Internet-capable phones among children has posed social problems in Japan, although the wired world offers enormous advantages for learning and communicating.

As children reveal personal information about themselves on "profile" sites that can be easily accessed through mobiles, they can become prey for fraudsters and paedophiles, experts have warned.

The survey found more than 80 percent of mobile phones used by high-school students have no restrictions on accessing potentially harmful sites. More than half of phones used by the middle school pupils are also unfiltered.