Do you as a parent or guardian feel that you should never have purchased that iPhone 5s or Samsung Galaxy S5 for your teen? After all, that smartphone virtually spelled the death of actual conversation in the household, as your teen became enamored with emojis and other kinds of virtual communication, even late into the night, with other humans. Well, some of the older folks are fighting back, so to speak, where the Board of Education in Kasuga, Japan, declared their intention to hold a curfew among junior high school students in the city so that they will not use their smartphones when the clock strikes 10 in the evening.
Working alongside local schools as well as parent-teacher associations, this particular board hopes that this initiative will be able to see students hand their smartphones over to adults between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., but so far, there has been not punishments set just yet in case there is a cheeky violator here and there.
With ubiquitous Internet access increasing the difficulty for parents to supervise their children, there are other inherent risks involved, such as cyberbullying, private information leaks, potential blackmail due to the sharing of revealing and racy photos, as well as unintended consumption of pay media. Do you think that this particular smartphone curfew idea would work outside of Japan?
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