New Mobile Services looks at children’s use of new mobile phone technology and the responses required by relevant actors, parents and children.
Download the full conference proceedings here.
Visit www.iajapan.org/hotline/2003mobile-en.html for further details of the programme and to see copies of Powerpoint presentations.
Click here to listen to a 2 minute audio report of the conference.
The spread and high use rates of mobile phones among children have been a very observable phenomenon. Research shows that one in four Japanese children have mobile phones (even one in three junior high school girls), and in the UK recent research shows 52% of all seven to sixteen year-olds own a mobile phone.
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Japan has led the way with the development of 3G technology hand phones, which provide access to the web and e-mail. These phones are extremely popular with teenagers, with their enhanced graphics and in particular access to music, sport and dating web sites. Sadly the latter have led to a number of cases of teenagers being hurt by adults they have been in touch with.
A meeting of industry experts in Tokyo, 6 March 2003, looked at the current uses of mobile phone technology by children, what issues this has raised, and what opportunities this offers. The meeting also mapped what the future has to offer, especially with regard to the move to 3G and subsequent technologies, and what responses there need to be from the relevant actors, including of course children and parents.
“We have learnt from the fixed Internet that children and young people love the opportunities technology brings to discover, connect and create. However, there are real dangers as well, especially in being in touch directly with people you don’t know. New mobile devices add the extra ingredient of being such a personal means of communication – away from the eyes and ears of parents and carers. As one industry speaker challenged us children should not be used as the ‘canary in the coalmine’ in the promotion of new mobile internet services.”
Nigel Williams - Chief Executive, Childnet International
The outcome of the meeting was to further the commitment of all involved to work towards promoting the positive and responding to any negatives that this new technology has already or will in the future offer children.