Student Union
- By Bruce Alpert
Teens in US and Japan Admit to Phone Addiction
About half of teenagers in the United States and in Japan say they can’t put their devices down.
Teens say they are addicted and that their devices cause the greatest conflict between them and parents, according to research at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism in Los Angeles.
“Nowadays, one of the worst things that can happen to us is, like, ‘Oh, I left my phone at home,’” said Alissa Caldwell, a student at the American School in Japan.
The study, “The New Normal: Parents, Teens and Digital Devices,” polled 1,200 Americans and 1,200 Japanese and was released at the USC Global Conference 2017 in Tokyo.
Their parents agree. A majority of Japanese and American parents said their teenagers used mobile devices too much. About 60 percent of both American and Japanese parents said they believe their children are addicted.
But parents shouldn’t get too comfortable: More than 1 in 3 Japanese parents said they also feel addicted to mobile devices, compared to about 1 in 4 American parents.
Many respond immediately to messages
About 7 in 10 American teens said they felt the need to respond immediately to mobile messages, compared to about half of Japanese teens.
In Japan, 48 percent of teens and 38 percent of parents say they look at and use their devices at least hourly. In the United States, 78 percent of teens and 69 percent of parents say they use their devices every hour.
At least that hourly usage stops when people are asleep, researchers said.
American parents and teens fight over devices more than families in Japan, research showed. One in three U.S. families reported having an argument every day about mobile device use.
Only about 1 in 6 Japanese families say they fight every day over mobile devices. But 20 percent of Japanese teens said they sometimes feel that their parents think their mobile device is more important than they are.
Only 6 percent of American teens feel their parents like their phones more than them. But 15 percent of American parents say their teens’ use of mobile devices hurts their relationship. By comparison, 11 percent of teens felt the same way.
The research was based on April interviews with 600 Japanese parents and 600 Japanese teenagers. Opinions from American parents and teenagers were collected in research done earlier by Common Sense Media.
“Advances in digital media and mobile devices are changing the way we engage not only with the world around us, but also with the people who are the closest to us,” said Willow Bay, Annenberg’s dean, which to some families might seem like a bit of an understatement.
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Economics, tensions blamed for Chinese students shifting from US to Australia, Britain
U.S. universities are welcoming international students as the academic year begins. But while the total number of foreign students is steadily growing, the top sending country, China, is showing signs of leveling out or shrinking.
Industry analysts say the negative trend is mainly due to higher costs amid China’s struggling economy, with a growing number of students going to less expensive countries like Australia and Britain, and tense ties between Washington and Beijing.
The number of foreign students studying in the U.S. in 2022-23 passed 1 million for the first time since the COVID pandemic, said Open Doors, an information resource on international students and scholars.
While the U.S. saw a nearly 12% total increase year-on-year for that period, the number of international students from China, its top source, fell by 0.2% to 289,526.
That’s 600 fewer students than the 2021-22 academic year, when their numbers dropped by nearly 9%. The COVID pandemic saw Chinese student numbers drop in 2020-21 by nearly 15%, in line with the world total drop.
While it’s not yet clear if the drop is a leveling out or a fluctuating decline, analysts say China’s struggling economy and the high cost of studying in the U.S. are the main reasons for the fall in student numbers.
Vincent Chen, a Chinese study abroad consultant based in Shanghai, said although most of his clients are still interested in studying in the U.S., there is a clear downward trend, while applicants for Anglophone universities in Australia and Britain have been increasing.
"If you just want to go abroad, a one-year master's degree in the U.K. is much cheaper,” Chen said. “Many people can't afford to study in the U.S., so they have to settle for the next best thing."
Data from the nonprofit U.S. group College Board Research shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, the average tuition and fees for a U.S. private college four-year education increased 4% to $41,540 compared with the previous academic year.
The British Council said three to four years of undergraduate tuition in Britain starts as low as $15,000.
The number of Chinese students in Britain was 154,260 in 2022-23, according to the U.K. Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, up from 121,145 in the 2018/19 academic year.
Australia’s Home Affairs office said in the 2023-24 program year, China was the top source foreign country for new student visa grants at 43,389, up slightly (1.5%) from the previous year.
Chen said Chinese state media's negative portrayal of the United States and concerns about discrimination have also contributed to the shift.
Bruce Zhang, a Chinese citizen who received his master's degree in Europe after studying in China, told VOA Mandarin he had such an incident occur to him after he was admitted to a U.S. university’s Ph.D. program.
When he entered Boston's Logan International Airport last year, Zhang said customs officers questioned him for more than an hour about his research, and if it had any links to the military, and took his computer and mobile phone for examination.
"Fortunately, I had heard that U.S. customs might be stringent in inspecting Chinese students, so I had relatively few study-related data and documents on my personal computer," he said.
Zhang was allowed to enter the U.S. for his studies in materials science, but the questioning left him so rattled that he has encouraged other Chinese to study elsewhere.
Cui Kai, a study abroad consultant in Massachusetts told VOA Mandarin that experiences like Zhang’s or worse happen for a reason.
"Students who were questioned or their visas were revoked at the customs are usually those who completed their undergraduate studies in China and come to the U.S. for a master's or doctoral degree in a sensitive major," said Cui.
Former President Donald Trump signed Proclamation 10043 in June 2020, prohibiting visas for any Chinese student who “has been employed by, studied at, or conducted research at or on behalf of, an entity in the PRC that implements or supports the PRC's “military-civil fusion strategy.”
The U.S. says China has been using students and scholars to gain access to key technology and, under Proclamation 10043, revoked more than 1,000 visas issued to Chinese nationals and has denied thousands more.
Critics say the policy is costly to the U.S. and is encouraging Chinese students to look to European and other universities.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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