Japan urges limits to kid's cell phone use
TOKYO (AP) - May 27, 2008 The government is worried about how elementary and junior high
school students are getting sucked into cyberspace crimes, spending
long hours exchanging mobile e-mail and suffering other negative
effects of cell phone overuse, Masaharu Kuba, a government official
overseeing the initiative, said Tuesday.
"Japanese parents are giving cell phones to their children
without giving it enough thought," he said. "In Japan, cell
phones have become an expensive toy."
The recommendations have been submitted from an education reform
panel to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's administration, and were
approved this week.
The panel is also asking Japanese makers to develop cell phones
with only the talking function, and GPS, or global positioning
system, a satellite-navigation feature that can help ensure a
child's safety.
About a third of Japanese sixth graders have cell phones, while
60 percent of ninth graders have them, according to the education
ministry.
Most mobile phones in Japan are sophisticated gadgets offering
high-speed Internet access called 3G, for "third-generation."
But the panel said better filtering programming is needed for
Internet access to protect children.
Some youngsters are spending hours at night on e-mail with their
friends. One fad is "the 30 minute rule," in which a child who
doesn't respond to e-mail within half an hour gets targeted and
picked on by other schoolmates.
Other youngsters have become victims of Internet crimes. In one
case, children sent in their own snapshots to a Web site and then
ended up getting threatened for money, Kuba said.
Cell phones tend to be more personal tools than personal
computers. Parents find that what their children are doing with
them are increasingly difficult to monitor, Kuba said.
Some Japanese children commute long distances by trains and
buses to schools and cram-schools and parents rely on cell phones
to keep in touch with their children.
Parents typically pay about 4,000 yen ($39) a month for cell
phone fees per child.
Japan boasts a relatively low crime rate compared to other
industrialized nations, but some people are concerned that the
Internet could be exploited for serious crimes.