January 12, 2008
Japanese children and cell phone obsession
Young Japanese people are evolving a new lifestyle for the 21st century based on the cellphones that few are now able to live without. [via the AFP]
"By the time they get to high school, 96 percent of Japanese students use cellphones. They are using their phones to read books, listen to music, chat with friends and surf the Internet -- an average of 124 minutes a day for high school girls and 92 minutes for boys.
Hideki Nakagawa, a sociology professor at Nihon University in Tokyo, said cellphones have become "an obsession" for youngsters.
"They feel insecure without cellphones, just the way sales people do without their name cards," he said.
... Another survey by professor Tetsuro Saito found that students can also use their cellphones as an emotional crutch, and the more problems they have at home, the more dependent they seem to become on their phones."
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