Japanese youngsters appear to be so addicted to connecting to the Internet via their cell phones that the government is now taking measures in order to prevent overuse by children.

The government is rather concerned with how elementary and junior high school students are involved in cell phone usage.

The Yahoo Finance quotes Masaharu Kuba, a government official commenting on the issue.

“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.

However, the new tendency among youngsters tends to bring up other problems.

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.

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.

Photo: © aaronbrethorst

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