Tokyo: Young Japanese people are evolving a new lifestyle for the 21st century based on the cellphones that few are now able to live without.

While about one-third of Japanese primary school students aged 7-12 years old use cellphones, by the time they get to high school that figure has shot up to 96 per cent, according to a government survey released last month.

They are using their phones to read books, listen to music, chat with friends and surf the Internet -- an average of 124 minutes a day for high school girls and 92 minutes for boys.

While the wired world they now inhabit holds enormous advantages for learning and communicating, it also brings a downside, say experts who point to a rise in cyberbullying and a growing inability among teenagers to deal with other people face to face.

"Kids say what is most important to them, next to their own lives, is their cellphone," said Masashi Yasukawa, head of the private National Web Counselling Council.

"They are moving their thumbs while eating or watching television," he said. The passion in 20-year-old Ayumi Chiba's voice backs up this assertion.

"My life is impossible without it," she says of her cellphone. "I used to pretend I was sick and leave school early when I forgot to take it with me." Hideki Nakagawa, a sociology professor at Nihon University in Tokyo, said cellphones have become "an obsession" for youngsters.

Source : PTI