The Japanese government this week introduced a program advising parents and schools to monitor children for cell phone addiction.
"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," writes the AP's Yuri Kageyama.
"One quite drastic measure being implemented is a request to phone manufacturers to create models with just voice and GPS functionality," notes Matthew at Geek.com. "This would still render the phone usable to contact parents and friends and still offers a location system to keep children safe. The lack of other advanced features mean addiction problems should be quelled."
More here from WebProNews ... more here from AHN ... and more here from AFP.
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The government is indeed thinking about getting phones developed with just the chat and GPS functions. The government says that the mobile phone is more personal than a PC and harder to monitor what the children are doing.
http://yuri-kageyama.blogspot.com