High school girls in Japan spend seven hours a day on phones

High school girls in Japan spend an average of seven hours a day on their mobile phones, a survey has found, with nearly 10 per cent of them putting in at least 15 hours.
Boys of the same age average just over four hours' mobile phone use a day, the survey by information security firm Digital Arts, published yesterday, said.

High school girls in Japan spend an average of seven hours a day on their mobile phones. Photo / Thinkstock
Teenagers tend to use their phones for social media, such as Line, a Japanese messaging and networking app, as well as smartphone games, making movies and other sharing apps like Instagram.
The poll comes amid growing concern over youngsters getting addicted to their portable technology, with Chinese research showing heavy phone use provokes the same kind of neurological changes as alcohol or cocaine dependency.
A total 96 per cent of Japanese high schoolers have a mobile phone, against 60 per cent of junior high school students, Digital Arts said. Almost four in every 10 children in the upper years of elementary school - from the age of 10 - use a mobile.
The online survey quizzed 618 children from schools across Japan.