Japan considers limits to children's cell phones

(CHICAGO) -- The Japanese government is concerned about how elementary and junior high school students are getting sucked into cyber-crimes--reportedly spending long hours exchanging e-mail messages and suffering other negative effects of cellphone overuse, said Masaharu Kuba, a government official.

"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."

Officials claim that 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.

About a third of Japanese sixth graders have cell phones--while 60 percent of ninth graders have them, according to the education ministry.

Cell phones tend to be more personal tools than personal computers. Parents find that what their children are doing with them are increasingly difficult to monitor, Kuba said. Parents typically pay about 4,000 yen ($39) a month for cell phone fees per child.

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 seeking the help of cellphone makers to develop phones with only the talking function, and a GPS satellite-navigation feature to help ensure children's safety.

Dallas Judge Tracks Chronic Truants with GPS devices

A county juvenile judge in East Dallas has ordered nine students at Bryan Adams High to wear a GPS monitoring unit as part of an Attendance Improvement Management Program, funded by a mix of county, nonprofit and private funds, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News.

Students are being fitted with a Global Positioning System device that allows truant officers to zero in on their location 24 hours a day. The device also contains a cellphone programmed with voice recognition software to prevent students from giving it to a friend to take to school in their place.

The project's use of GPS tracking devices is unusual but not unique.

"We're still evaluating the program," said Jon Dahlander, citing cost concerns and the number of students currently enrolled in the project.

Last year, Maryland lawmakers proposed something similar for truants in Prince George's County, but the measure went nowhere. And this spring, a Midland, Texas, judge created a GPS-based monitoring program for 15 truants in his court.

In Dallas, the program exists only in Judge Chavez's court, and thus far has touched just 55 students. Judge Chavez places teens into the program only after their truancy becomes so bad that they face the prospect of being sent to juvenile detention.

The students selected for the program averaged 55 missed school days a year and were at the bottom 1 percent of the approximately 9,000 students adjudicated by Dallas County Truancy Court last year. If the students continue to skip school, they end-up back in Judge Chavez's court and face a misdemeanor contempt of court charge.

Years ago, the criminal justice system discovered that Global Positioning System devices are useful in tracking parolees and those under house arrest. GPS units proved to be an inexpensive and effective alternative to incarceration.

Debates on technology-related blogs and among civil libertarians center on whether GPS devices are too invasive for misdemeanor truants.