Online Relationships and Privacy Issue Among Young Generations in Japan
Akiko ORITA, Ph.DAssociate Professor, Kanto Gakuin University
JAPAN
1
Contents
• Overview: Access to the Internet by Young Generation
• Relationships and Risk of Cyberbullying
• Privacy and Sexual Risk
• Education and Intervention
• Conclusion
2
Access to the Internet by Young Generation in Japan
Access to the Internet by generation
Device usage (2017)
73.3% 71.6%74.8%
82.6%
73.6%
97.9% 97.8% 98.2% 98.4% 96.9%98.5%99.2% 99.0% 99.2% 98.7%
82.8% 82.8% 83.0% 83.5%80.9%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
6y-12y 13-19y 20-29y All
Source: MIC “WHITE PAPER Information and Communications in Japan”
30.3%
75.2%
90.0%
59.7%
6.4% 5.6% 5.1%9.9%
27.5%
51.5%
68.6%
52.5%
32.7%
24.2%21.5% 20.9%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
6y-12y 13-19y 20-29y All
SmartPhone FeaturePhone PC Tablet
Most students start using smartphone from middle school to access to the Internet 3
Spend Time and Communicate online : Students and Parents
Time Spent Online Use Smartphone for communication with others
Both parents of teenagers are now generations who are familiar with
online communication and smartphone use
Source: Report by Cabinet Office (2017)
Teenagers spend 73min (Weekday) and
122min (Weekend) on Social Media
c.f. All generations 31min(Weekday) and
41min(Weekend)
4
97.3
144.3 148.7131.1
213.8
135.9
33.4%45.4% 56.7%42.4% 74.2% 43.5%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
0
50
100
150
200
250
Avarage Ratio of 2h+
46.9%
84.5%91.1%93.5%
92.4%92.4%
Elementary Mid-School High-School
Student Parents
Popular online services for male and female students
Female students are more likely to use Instagram and Twitter than
Male students in high school
Source: Report by DigitalArts,2018
5
71.8%
63.1%
81.6%86.4%
96.1% 95.1%
59.2%
49.5% 52.4% 52.4%
83.5%87.4%
26.2%
14.6%9.7% 12.6%
7.8% 6.8%
18.4%12.6%
23.3%21.4%
73.8%
87.4%
17.5%11.7%
4.9%
15.5%
28.2%
73.8%
3.9% 3.9% 1.0% 2.9% 1.0%7.8%
2.9% 1.0% 0.0% 0.0%2.9%
8.7%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
M-Elementary
F-Elementary M-MiddleSchool
F-MiddleSchool
M-Highschool
F-Highschool
LINE YouTube Facebook Twitter Instagram Snapchat Twitcasting
Relationships with friends• They spend time both online and offline with their friends
• Using IM for personal chat and group chat• With classmates, club activities etc.
• When they want to talk about their problems, most of them prefer face-to-face communication, while certain ratio of them have experience consulting with their friends by IM (Orita et al, 2016)
53.4%
19.4%
29.1%
4.9%5.8%
20.4%5.8%
49.5%
21.4%29.1%
3.9%
1.9%
22.3%
4.9%
70.9%
26.2%
14.6%6.8% 3.9%
11.7%3.9%
81.6%
19.4% 17.5%11.7%
7.8%1.7%
5.8%
84.5%
29.1%
16.5%
45.6%
9.7%1.9% 2.9%
85.4%
37.9%
20.4%
49.5%
30.1%
4.9%
1.0%0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
LINE Face-to-Face Telephone Twitter Instagram Email Facebook
Means for communicating with friends (MA)
M-Elementary F-Elementary M-MidSchool F-MidSchool M-Highschool F-Highschool
Source: Report by DigitalArts,2018 6
Relationships with friends
• They foster community rules by themselves• Teenagers have their own thoughts and priority(Takeuchi,2014)
• As they grow up they learn how to manage online human relationship• E.g. How to deal with “ leave on seen”
7
Risks: Cyberbullying
• Cyberbullying• 10,779 recognized cases in schools (2016)
• MEXT declares “The basic policy for bullying prevention”(2013)• “cyberbullying “ was stated
• Free telephone counselling (SNS-Hotline) was provided 24hrs/7d (2016)
Elementary Middle School High-SchoolSpecial Nedes
School
Natioal 0.1% 0.6% 0.2% 0.0% 1.0%
Public 24.5% 49.7% 16.1% 1.3% 91.6%
Private 0.2% 2.8% 4.5% 0.0% 7.5%
Total 24.9% 53.1% 20.8% 0.2% 100.0%
(Source: the report by MEXT, 2018)8
Teenagers want privacy• Every teenager wants their privacy!
• The myth “ teenagers do not care about privacy “• Evidence that suggests little variation between adults and young people
(Hoofnagle et al., 2010; Madden et al., 2013)
• They create tactics to regulate who could access their information online (Marwick & boyd,2014)• Social steganography “read between the lines”
• Original jargon
• Concerned about Privacy in children ways• Conceal or obscure their information from their parents, teachers and
online patrol
Difficulty in intervention by parents9
Usage of Multiple Accounts by Context
• Major reasons why they use multiple accounts are:• To make friends common
interest
• To disclose themselves
• To obscure hobbies from real-life friends
• They represent their online identities via context and network
Based on data by DigitalArts,2018 10
31.1% 29.1% 31.1% 29.1%
48.5%
68.9%
Ratio of having multiple accounts of Social Media
(Male and Female students)
Risks: Luring, Sexual Abuse and Suicide
• Luring• Sexual Trouble (Cybergrooming)
• Details of victims (2017)• Paid Dating 38.7% • “He was kind to me” 26.8%
• “Runaway Girl”
• Suicide• Suicidal online postings
• E.g. Zama Suicide Pact Slayings in 2017
• The government announced measures to help suicidal postings on SNS (2017.12)
Council for youth network use environment improvement was founded by 6 companies (2017.7)
• including GREE, CyberAgent, DeNA, Facebook Japan , mixi and LINE
Source: the National Police Agency in Japan (2018)
1278
1085 10611153 1100
724
453
254 282218
159 15293 42
7921136
1239
1085 1076
12931421
16521736
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
1800
2000
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Number of Victim children
Dating website Community website
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Measures by Parents for online safety
Source: Report by Cabinet Office (2017)
As teenagers grow up,
it becomes more difficult
for parents to intervene in
children’s online life.
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96.4%
74.9%
41.5%
10.3%
33.3%27.2%
4.6%
89.7%
41.4%39.6%
13.5%
42.9%47.4%
6.3%
78.7%
16.0% 18.5%
11.3%
32.5%
45.8%
3.5%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Control byParents(TOTAL)
parentalsupervisoin
Decide therules
Kid'sCellphone
UnderstandInternetusage
InformationFiltering
others
Elementary Middle-School High-School
Education and intervention respecting autonomy of the young generation
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Online literacy education at schools
• Two approaches for Internet safety and literacy• “Information” subject in school curriculum
• Learn about technology, safety and social relationship
• However, 27.6% of teachers do not have appropriate subject qualifications (MEXT, 2018)
• As a part of school life guidance• Some schools have a regulation which prohibits bringing or
using smartphones
• Some schools ask for online patrol to detect cyber bullying, information leaking etc.
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Educational Material available online
• Educational material about Internet Literacy are provided online by organizations• Ministries (e,g, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Ministry of
Justice, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, NISC etc.)
• Local governments / Universities / Associations (e.g. IPA, IAJ etc.)
• Private companies(LINE, Yahoo! Japan, Kaspersky, Bennese, Disney etc.)
• About 100 websites are easy to be found online in various format (as for 2018.7)
• Texts and pictures/comics describing online risk and literacy • Video, Game
• Most of them are out-of-date, not catching up latest situations
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Effective education for the young generation
• Foster resilience of online life• Not only learn case studies, but also train
decision making are necessary
• Extract students’ real intention from discussion• Opportunity to know young generations’
reality (Orita et al , 2016)• Clue to intervene possible online risks
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Intervention via the Internet
• Counseling by IM/SNS via smartphone• More than 2,600 students accessed LINE counseling services and 547 cases were
dealt with in 10 days in Nagano Prefecture (2017)
• C.f. 259 cases of telephone counseling in a year (2016)
• MEXT started supporting SNS counseling (2018)
• The health ministry(MHLW) provided trial SNS suicide hotlines (2018)
• Protecting Applications• Filtering and parental control application are provided by mobile companies and other
service providers
• Not only the surveillance but also “sharing” applications based upon agreement of children and parents are used
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Conclusion
• It is necessary to design a strategy how to protect children respecting their autonomy and privacy of them
• It is necessary to seek how to intervene teenagers’ online life before they are at risk
• Future Work• Access to children of Low-SES
• Design and diffusion of effective educational materials and supporting technologies
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