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Our Studies > Mobile Phones
Mobile Phones
This study was undertaken and carried out by PROTEGELES, a Child Welfare Association on the Information and Communication Technologies under the Child Ombudsperson request.
Summary of the most relevant data
- It is remarkable that most children do very rarely use their cell phones as a telephone. They use every other functions cell phones offer but they don’t use it to make phone calls. Just 24% of children using a mobile phone make phone calls with it on daily basis. Most of them do it much less frequently, 26% just once a week, 26% twice a week and the remaining 24% around three or four days a week.
- Children use mobile phones to send text messages –SMS- much more often than to actually talk to other people. While only 22% of children send SMSs just once or twice a week, 28% do it three or four times a week and 50% of children send SMSs every day.
- Children send much more messages during the weekends that during working days. One out of four children send 10 to 20 SMSs during the weekends.
- Thanks to this study, we have known that 78% of children hacing a mobile phone have already changed their handset at least once. More specifically, 24% of the children having a mobile have changed it twice and another 24% has done it three times.
- 33% of children have changer their mobile phone because of damage of failure of the previous one while 20% of children have change it because they were given a new one.
- Concerning children’s expenses on mobile phones, 41% of children with mobile phones spend less than 3 euros a week on it, 34% spend 3 to 5 euros, 18% spend 5 to 10 euros a week while the remaining 7% spend more than 10 euros a week. Translating these figures into a monthly rate, 41% of children spend less than 12 euros a month, 34% spend from 1 to 20 euros a month. On the highest level of expenditure, 18% of children spend 20 to 40 euros a month and 7% say that they spend more than 40 euros a month.
- Los productos asociados al teléfono móvil más demandados por los menores son los tonos o melodías, adquiridos ya por el 77% de los menores, seguidos de los logos y fondos, adquiridos por el 68%.
- El 69% de los menores que dispone de teléfono móvil utiliza sistemas de prepago, frente al 31% que accede a través de contrato .
- The most demanded mobile-related product by children is ringing tones, which 77% of children with a mobile phone have already purchased at least once. The second most demanded one is logos and screen backgrounds, already bought by 68% of children.
- 69% of children with a mobile phone use pre-pay systems while 31% have contract with a Mobile Network Operator.
- 30% of children have already bought games to play on their mobile phones. This doesn’t mean that the remaining 70% do not play games on the mobile as most handsets have pre-installed games on them.
- The majority of children using mobile phones have already been sent pictures to it. Most of the times, they are pictures of their friends or funny pictures, but sometimes they can be pictures with a pornographic content. This is the case for 9% of children using a mobile phone. On the other hand, 7% of children have been sent funny pictures and 47% have received pictures of their friends.
- Just 14% of the children admit having chatted throuth their mobile phones, but half of them, that is to say, 7% of the total do it not only with his friends, but also with strangers.
- Unfortunately, sexual harassment to children via mobile phone is not a piece of news anymore: 18% of children using a mobile phone, regardless of their sex, have already felt object of a sexual harassment through his/her mobile phone.
- Advertising of any kind of products via SMS is increasing steadily. Messages luring children to take part in contests or games of chance via mobile are specially worrying. 73% of minors using a mobile phone say having been sent an SMS inviting them to take part in lotteries. Not only undesired advertising is increasing dramatically, spans messages (unsolicited messages) are becoming very usual, as it happened with emails. Children are not an exception: 68% of children have received unsolicited SMS and 13% say receiving span messages very often.
As it is the case with Internet, some children may become addicted to some
of these new technologies..
As it is also the case with Internet, children may develop an addiction to mobile phones and to the new technologies related to it. In Spain, there has been some cases of children addicted to the mobile phone that have needed professional care. Here after are some conclusions on the problem of children becoming addicted to mobile phone:
- Many of them state that they feel unease and even anxious when deprived of their mobile phones, usually because of a breakdown or a punishment. Even though 62% of children with a mobile phone say not feeling anything special when deprived of their mobile phone, this means that the remaining 38% experience negative feelings when denied access to their mobile: 28% feel “at complete unease” and 10% say that the experience was “nearly unbearable”.
- 11% of children using mobile phones admit to have lied of cheated on their parents or even having stolen money from the family house to pay their phone bills of buy a new card.
- El 25% de los menores que utiliza teléfono móvil gasta más de 20 euros al mes en su móvil : un 18% gasta entre 20 y 40 euros, y un 7% afirma gastar más de 40 euros mensuales.
All our data are broken down into ages and into the Spanish education level : primaria (primary education), E.S.O (Secondary Complusory Education) and Bachillerato (two courses before university).
NOTES ON THE RESULTS
We want to highlight that this study’s results concern only those children thar use a mobile phone and not the totality of Spanish children.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STUDY
The characteristics of the study are detailed on its first pages. For its completion, two thousand 11-17 year-old children of both sexes were surveyed.
