Half of Japanese Scared of Using Internet
January 28th, 2008 by James
Or so an official government survey says:
Some 45.4 percent of respondents to the poll said going online makes them feel uneasy, as opposed to the 36.3 percent who said they were not worried and 18.3 percent who were undecided about how to answer the question.
Cabinet Office officials said that 55 percent of those in their 40s felt unsure about the Internet, making it the demographic most uneasy, but more than 50 percent of those in their 30s and 50s also felt ill at ease about cyberspace.
Does going online make you uneasy?
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The English version of this article seems rather incomplete, as it didn’t give details like the number of people who were surveyed which were in the Japanese version.
Basically,
-5000 people over 20 were targeted for the poll and 3006 people answered
-In regards to particular online hazards that the respondents felt scared/worried or uneasy about, 66.5% picked “leaking of personal information by computer viruses”, 52.1% picked “unauthorized usage of passwords” (by hacking), and 50.5% picked “overhead fees/unfair charges”.
-In regards to particular Internet crimes that the respondents wanted police to be more in control of, 64.5% picked “children in sex crime-like crimes” (not sure how to translate this part, the original Japanese was 児童が性的犯罪にあう犯罪 and I’m not sure if にあう here is 似合う or に会う), 56.4% picked “the display of obscene images”, and 53.3% picked “murder or bomb threats”.
Would not be 似合う. I would imagine it’s more like ‘fit’ (大きさに合っている、服が体に合う）. So “crimes fitting [the description of] sex crimes” would be my translation. Or it could be “the crime of letting children see (meet) sex crimes”. That’s probably it actually. I don’t think it refers to children actually doing these crimes (eg enjo kousai etc).
trolls, strange people
i dont get it
why???
I’m not surprised that those in their 40s and 50s would be most uneasy about the Internet as they tend to not know a lot about computers or how the Internet works. If this survey had focused on younger people, like those in their 20s, you’d probably get a different result.
People over 20 were surveyed, as doinkies points out. Given that they weren’t provided as a notable statistic, one assumes that there was very little fear amongst them.
And the things they are afraid of aren’t so unreasonable, really, despite all being rather rare. The “leaking of personal information” fear is a little odd, given the amount of personal information requested on any given form in Japan.
Murder and bomb threats, though, absolutely baffles me.
What Japan Thinks has a more detailed post about this survey including the other questions that were asked. It’s in the news box.
“Personal information” leaks are big news in Japan right now, which would be why.
I’d be scared of the internet too if it had a face and talked to me directly like in the drawing above.
Depends whose face, and what it said….
In other (unrelated) news, half of Japanese are computer illiterate and probably aren’t even sure what that “internet” thing is.
Like my wife, who literally does not know how to turn on my computer without instruction – and forget trying to turn it off. Why can’t you have a normal power button on the machine that automatically goes through the Exploder shut-down routine, eh?
About 6 years ago I bought a laptop for my in-laws.
Both ma and pa are in their 60’s. Over two evenings – about 2-3 hours, I gave them a quick introduction on how to setup the laptop and navigate round the pc. They connected to the Internet (not my fault guv…). On the second night I gave them some personal security advice about using the Internet, set-up a hotmail account for them and showed them some search engines. – That’s it!
They took to it like a duck to water. Over the past few years, they have attended public courses for word-processing, how to use the internet … and about five or six other courses.
Last week my father-in-law bought a custom (design your own and we build it) laptop on line. It’s to be used to communicate – vid-link, with his wife while he’s away on business trips.
It gives them so much peace of mind to see each other when they’re apart.
All Japanese people need is a little help to get started – just like the rest of us. I’m proud of ‘em.