Growing Criticism of Mobile Phone Use for Adolescents in Japan

As the popularity of mobile phones spreads among teenagers, many adults are concerned about the adverse effects in Japan. The Asahi, one of the major newspapers in Japan, pointed to the risks of mobile phone use:

Every year, about 1,000 children become involved in rape and other crimes through dating service sites. Violent and obscene images are only a couple of clicks away. On gakko ura saito, or so-called unofficial school websites where kids can post whatever they want, anyone can fall victim to brutal "verbal mob lynching" by their peers. (Editorial, Asahi Shimbun, June 5, 2008)

Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda commented in April 2008, "I can't think of one good reason for (letting youngsters) have a mobile phone. Malevolent adults take advantage of the widespread use of the mobile phone among children. The mobile phone is harmful for children who study social relations, and is not useful for educational purposes." The government considers shielding young people from harmful information on websites and cyber bullying. Some policy makers even seek to enact a law regulating against the use of mobile phones among primary and middle high school students (Asahi Shimbun, July 12, 2008). Such criticism is widely supported by public opinion. According to a survey conducted among readers of the Asahi in July 2008, 60 % of the respondents agreed with the prohibition of mobile phone use among primary and middle high school students.

Japan's National Police Agency published a report on the use of mobile phones and juvenile delinquents (Juvenile Division, National Police Agency, 2004). According to the report, juvenile delinquents used mobile phones more frequently than non-delinquent students, and delinquent tendencies and frequency of mobile phone use are significantly and positively correlated even among non-delinquent students. This correlation shows that mobile phone use could result in a very serious problem. However, despite growing criticism of mobile phone use for adolescents, only a few studies have tested the effect of mobile phone use on delinquent tendencies based on scientific data.

In the paper for the Communication Acrobatics Book Project, I focused on how use patterns and motivations are associated with the influences of the mobile phone, based on a survey of primary high school students at age 14 in Tokyo (N = 311). Factor analysis of motivations yielded two factors, namely, emotionality and instrumentality. The first factor, emotionality, is significantly correlated with the frequency of text messaging and the delinquency score. However, despite the significant and positive correlation between the delinquency score and the frequency of text messaging, the effect of text messaging on delinquency was not significant when controlling the motivation factors. These results suggested that use patterns and motivations should be considered when examining the effects of mobile phone use on adolescents.

Kenichi Ishii
U. of Tsukuba

Is there room for copyright issues in social networks?

Internet has evolved from an information highway to social tipping networks. Earlier the nodes or hubs of the network were media houses, publishers or other major actors. Now the easy to use tools enable anyone to store and share different type of data and information with his/her peers. Whereas sharing your opinions in blogs or creating virtual designs at the Second Life are considered to be positive phenomena, related activity to that, peer to peer (P2P) file sharing have caused problems to the music industry for almost 10 years already. P2P model enable people to share files on their personal computers with other people over the net. The first P2P-software called Napster was released in 1999. Napster encountered legal troubles and closed down but soon after other similar services followed. Not until now for example iTunes have added competitive commercial alternatives for downloading music from the web.

In our survey we asked youngsters attitudes towards software piracy. Half of the respondents - both men and women - considered piracy to be wrong as such but still almost 1/3 of men and 1/7 of women had downloaded music often from the net. It was also interesting to find out that copyright issues relate to individual values. 30% of men and 34% of women said they tend to avoid piracy when a small label or software house in question. In other words the respondents considered that big record labels and software houses would adjust with the loss better than small ones.

So far only a small minority of people have downloaded chargeable music from the web. One reason for that is most likely the lack of payment methods at the teenage user group. Besides digital distribution of music, lately other alternative sales channels have been introduced as well. According to compiled NPD and Nielsen SoundScan data, sales of console games such guitar Hero and Rock Band brought in more revenue in 2007 than digital music downloads from services like iTunes.

Sonja Kangas
Finnish Youth Research Network

Hot and cool Internet

Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) is famous for his expression "the medium is the message". What he means is that media are extensions of our human senses, bodies and minds. The media themselves carry their own message. However, McLuhan is not seen as an archetype of a thinker that is logical and clear.

My humble try is to illuminate the mcluhanian message that the Internet is embodying in the young people. I try to approach this message by analysing the most agreed answers relating to Internet.

On the other hand I try to find fundamental questions that divide young people. Questions that we can use in explaining the differences of today's Internet natives - whether communication acrobating in the cathedral and bazaar of the Internet or finding more traditional ways of self-expression.

McLuhan made a division between hot and cold media and these concepts seem to be crucial for my inquiry. Hot media is high definition media which is well filled with information, giving little space for the receiver to fill and to participate. Cold media on the other hand is low definition media, which needs more interpretation on behalf of the receiver and which gives a lot of space to fill and to participate. Photograph is hot and cartoon is cold. Seminar is hot and lecture is cold. Movie is hot and TV is cold (there were no HDTV:s when McLuhan wrote his "Understanding Media"!!). McLuhan saw electric media as cool media - leading way to new tribal consciousness, with people interacting more with each other and overcoming the old hot paper media.

But the Internet as a media does not really fit into either cold or hot mcluhanian media type. It is both or neither. There seems to be every previous media present in the Internet - movies and books on the hot side and blogs, wikis or Google on the cold side. Maybe we see Hegelian/Marxian dialectic here overcoming hot and cold? But before proclaiming Internet being the Absolute, let me take a closer look at the material ...

Jussi Honkanen
University of Helsinki

Youth workers relocating into virtual worlds

Today, early teens are provided municipal youth services in Habbo, the popular commercial social virtual world. It plays an important role in coming across the young who are not otherwise reached. Yet there are other virtual environments, such as massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) that attract millions of users around the world in real time via fictional characters. Members are closely connected to a number of MMORPGs where they interact with one another every day. These MMORPGs are not only game-oriented but they have a social function too. For youth service organizations to efficiently allocate scarce resources, it is essential to understand that social behavior and norms in virtual environments, comparable to those in the physical world, have an effect on contributing to the economic value creation particularly vital to ensuring longevity of commercial MMORPGs. However, this economic value, a sub-dimension of relative advantage, changes over time and thus should be examined in terms of diffusion of innovation.

According to Dr. Everett Rogers in his book "Diffuse of innovations" diffusion is a process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. This is to say, MMORPGs are perceived as new by members who inform others about its existence and characteristics facilitated or impeded by social norms.

Time is involved in the five step process in which the members pass from first knowledge to confirmation of the decision. Moreover, members join MMORPGs at different times. Hence, members could be described and classified in terms of innovativeness as they differ from one another in the way they acquire new ideas, which in turn explains why the perceived attributes of MMORPGs have an effect on its rate of adoption.

Instead of fully adopting the Rogers’ classification of members of a social system on the basis of innovativeness, early majority has been left out and only four categories are included: 1) innovators, 2) early adopters, 3) late majority, and 4) laggards. If social interaction is perceived by the young in all categories as relative advantage or compatible with needs, it is positively related to MMORPGs adoption. However, I argue that there is a strong possibility that the perceived social interaction is unlikely to affect all categories equally. Social connectedness and participation scales will be used as a basis for measuring social interaction.

Given these considerations, a study on social interaction related to innovativeness among the young will provide additional micro level insight into how resources for youth services should be allocated.

Jani Merikivi
Finnish Youth Research Society

Is the Internet the Egg or the Hen?

In my research project I focus on the markets and fans of Japanese popular culture in Finland. In relation to the Internet Usage Survey I have also taken a quick glance at Internet in the lives of the fans.

In the Internet Usage Survey those respondents who say that they are very interested in Japanese popular culture, are also heavy users of the Internet. However, what we don’t know of them is that which was first: Japanese popular culture or the Internet. In other words, did they happen to grow interested in Japanese popular culture while already constantly hanging around in the Internet? Or did they - through friends, television or the Internet – get interested in the subject most plentifully available in the Internet and because of this become heavy users of the Internet?

This might seem like a mundane and irrelevant issue, but there are some reasons why it would be interesting or even important to know.

Fans and fan communities are often seen as leaders in Internet and other new media usage, forming a new participatory culture. Since fandom as such, even these days, is often considered as something suspicious or deviant, focusing on the active Internet usage of fans can be a redemptive project, an attempt to justify the fandom itself. Thomas LaMarre (2007) emphasizes that some Japanese writers who have discussed the otaku-culture (or the hard-core popular culture fandom in Japan) tend to exaggerate the importance of the media on the expense of the fact that for many (male) otaku the affect is not the media, but in fact the woman, that can be reached - if not in real life, then at least - through the media. I tend to agree with LaMarre, and consider his point to be applicable in wider perspective as well.

Based on my research material, the Internet for the Japanese popular culture fans is a source of information, a way to take part in fan communities, a shopping center (for both legal and illegal material) and place for publishing different types of fan productions. The focus of interest and feelings, the affect for the fans, is not the Internet itself, but the world of Japanese popular culture that opens up through the Internet.

What about those respondents who in the Internet Usage Survey stated that they are very interested in Japanese popular culture?

We have no way of knowing which was first for them, based on the questions of this survey alone. To find that out, we should go and ask again.

Katja Valaskivi
University of Tampere

Roots are deep down underneath the virtual world

Now that the biggest hype of the Internet has settled, it seems to have found its place in the world of communication. Still the web has many "black holes" which are out of the reach of any authorities' control. With anonymous profiles people can act on the web feeling more free to play roles or open up one's fantasies. For the field of media culture, these features present many new points to consider, both good and bad. For an individual user this freedom gives a chance to became an active content provider and to leave the passive role of an audience behind.

These new ways of creating your own content to the media have been adopted very easily into the youth culture. Watching and making videos, for example, are very popular hobbies amongst youngsters. This self-made content to the web gives more room for local and personal views than the old fashioned tv-production system does. It's interesting to notice that the importance of locality can be seen on the web quite clearly even though the first scenarios expected a generation of "global citizens" to take over the world.

In my article I'm focusing on the youth's locality on the web. I'm asking what kind of a difference does the geographical area that the youngsters live in make to their values and attitudes? To give some kind of an answer I'm comparing the answers of the young people of Lapland with those of the rest of the Finnish youth. In addition I'll be using parts of a qualitative research I´ve made among youngsters in Pelkosenniemi, a county in Lapland. I'll be concentrating on the youth's ways to participate on the web. To bring their own locality and culture on to the web one must participate and provide content.

On one hand the web brings different cultures closer to each other but at the same time it gives tools to create unique cultures with their own special features. It´s good to remember that even though the web has it's own powerful effect on youth, there also is many other influences in their lives. Locality plays a big role in young peoples lives even in the web-era.

Niina Salmijärvi
University of Lapland

Characteristics of youth civic identities in relation to media

It has been claimed that today's "individualistic citizen" no longer uses news media for gaining information on political matters. So what? Reading or watching news is not the only way for young citizens to engage with public sphere anymore: digital youth culture has created new public spaces for the young to act. A young girl in her bedroom for instance can create a national or even global media by introducing second hand clothing and style in her blog.

We are interested in civic media participation, which we assume integrates cultural and political modes of participation. In the analysis we are going to compare the aspects of the ways of using the net and other media to political interests of the young respondents, aged 15-19. In our earlier study, we have suggested four types of civic identities of young people in relation to media, in the Finnish context. These types have been approached as two-dimensional including civic self-image (seeing oneself as a citizen) and mediated civic connectedness (connection to public issues via media). The types are named as seekers, communicators, communalists and activists.

Now we want to develop forward, more detailed these characteristics - and look whether these are valid at all in this international setting.

Sirkku Kotilainen and Leena Rantala
University of Jyväskylä