Tag Archives: count

Making Each Moment Count: Japan’s Gen Z Strives for Just 2 Hours of Smartphone Use

Posted on by
Reply

Even while employed full-time in Tokyo, Moriyama Shoki still dedicates eight hours daily to his smartphone.

“You need a mobile device to navigate the information age,” Moriyama states. At just 25, he represents a generation that cannot envision life without continuously scrolling through news, social media, messaging platforms, and casual video clips.

He’s not alone. The excessive use of smartphones is a worldwide trend, yet Japanese officials are stepping in as concerns rise over the physical and mental impacts, particularly affecting children and youth.


Last week, Toyoake, a central city in Japan, implemented measures to restrict smartphone usage for its 69,000 residents to just two hours a day. Authorities state this aims to tackle growing evidence of digital addiction and lack of sleep, although the town council’s ordinance does not impose penalties on those who disregard it.

Moriyama was one of several individuals in their twenties who accepted a challenge from the Guardian to limit smartphone usage to two hours while sharing their experiences.

Results varied from impressive successes to significant failures.




Moriyama Shoki remarked that limiting phone use to two hours daily feels “too little.” Photo: Justin McCurry/Guardian

Moriyama, who regularly checks LINE—a “super app” for messaging, news, and entertainment, along with TikTok, Instagram, and X—admitted that abstaining from these platforms or significantly reducing usage is challenging.

“I typically spend about eight hours on my phone, so two hours is insufficient. I can’t stay current with everything,” he explains. “In the end, I managed to limit my smartphone usage to an hour and 50 minutes, which is a noteworthy decrease from my usual screen time. I used the extra time to read books, study, and hit the gym, so I didn’t waste my day.”

My colleague Hanaoka Tomomi also succeeded in curbing this habit. “I usually spend about three hours on my phone during the week and six to seven hours on weekends, so two hours felt very restrictive. Most people need at least three to four hours,” Hanaoka notes. Previously, avoiding LINE, TikTok, and Instagram felt impossible.

“I adhered to the two-hour limit and spent my free time reading and pursuing other activities.”

University student Saito Akari realized early on that “the more restrictions you impose, the more I want to engage.”

Saito appreciates Toyoake’s initiative as a starting point for broader conversations about smartphone usage, but believes the focus should be on quality of use rather than the quantity of screen time. “However, finding a line between education and entertainment can be tricky.”

Despite his determined efforts, Saito found it tough to limit daily phone use to three or four hours. “I especially struggled to put my phone down while commuting or walking. But using my phone less could make the day feel longer and more significant.”


Yuri* has attempted to limit her smartphone usage before exams by hiding Instagram and implementing password protections.

She uses her phone for checking social media, searching recipes, texting, and accessing educational materials, yet too much screen time often leads to headaches and eye strain.

“I wonder why the ordinance explicitly recommends limiting smartphone usage. If the goal is to encourage people to reconsider their usage, they should foster individual rules,” she contends.

“Overall, I’m supportive of the proposed methods for smartphone use, as I don’t rely on it for hobbies. Nonetheless, such measures could be unacceptable for those who primarily use smartphones for entertainment and stress relief.”




A man uses his smartphone to take pictures in Suzuka city. Photo: Anadoll/Getty Images

Mayor Koki Masafumi of Toyoake has defended the new regulations despite receiving numerous complaints from residents about government interference in their personal lives.

Kouki mentioned that while he frequently uses his smartphone to check baseball scores and navigate, he sets it aside during meal times and expressed concern that children and young individuals are compromising sleep and family interactions due to excessive scrolling, emailing, and posting.

In response to the criticism online, including misinformation suggesting strict enforcement of the two-hour rule, he explained to the Mainichi Shimbun, “When you hear ‘two hours,’ it prompts you to reflect on your actual usage. That’s significant.”


A recent survey from the Children and Family Agency indicates that Japanese youth spend an average of just over five hours online on weekdays.

Aya* exceeds the national average, typically logging around eight hours each day.

“We couldn’t restrict ourselves to two hours, but just being aware of the challenge made a difference. Ultimately, we managed to reduce our standard smartphone usage by approximately 60%, which was substantial,” the university student reported, acknowledging that she still consulted a travel planner and checked emails and messages.

She expressed support for Toyoake City’s initiative and speculated that the absence of penalties could be its greatest strength.

“That’s what makes it sensible… establishing personal rules is crucial. It’s an invaluable chance to reflect on daily habits, rather than just thinking abstractly.”

She mentioned she often spent time “scrolling aimlessly.”

“I found it easier to engage in conversations and pay more attention to my surroundings, which enriched my day.”

This will surely resonate with Koki. On the eve of his town’s controversial social engineering experiment, the mayor stated he believes it’s worthwhile. “It’s about sleep, family, and health,” he asserts. “This ordinance will encourage more people to pause and discuss their habits, even briefly, and it will prove effective.”

*Names have been changed upon request.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Are you underestimating the actual global population count?

Posted on by
Reply

Population estimates for rural China may be incorrect

ShutterStock/Aphotostory

Rural population estimates underestimate the number of actual people living in these areas by at least half, researchers argue. However, the findings are contested by demographics. Demography says such underestimation is unlikely to change the head count of a nation or world.

Josiasláng-ritter And while his colleagues at Aalto University in Finland were working to understand the extent to which the dam construction project resettled people, they continued to get numbers that differed significantly from official statistics while estimating the population.

For the purposes of the investigation, they used data on 307 dam projects in 35 countries, including China, Brazil, Australia and Poland, completed between 1980 and 2010, and obtained the number of people reported to have resettled in each case as the population of the area prior to evacuation. We then cross-checked these numbers to break down the area into a square grid, and estimated the number of people living in each square to reach the total.

Láng-Ritter and his colleagues discovered that what they say is a clear contradiction. Their analysis shows that the most accurate estimates increased the actual number by 53% on average, while the worst was 84%. “We were very surprised to see how big this underestimation is,” he says.

The official UN estimate of the world population is around 8.2 billion, but Láng-Ritter says the analysis shows perhaps much higher, but refuses to give a specific number. “Today, population estimates are likely to be conservative accounting, and there is reason to believe that these over 8 billion people are significantly more common,” he says.

The team suggests that these counting errors will occur. This is because rural census data are often incomplete or unreliable, and population estimation methods have historically been designed for the best accuracy in urban areas. Correcting these systematic biases is important to avoid inequality for rural communities, researchers suggest. This can be done by improving census in such areas and recalibrating the population model.

If rural population estimates are far more abolished, it could have a significant impact on the provision of government services and plans, Láng-Ritter said. “The impact may be very large because these datasets are used for so many different types of actions,” he explains. This includes planning transportation infrastructure, building health facilities, and risk reduction efforts in natural disasters and epidemics.

However, not everyone is convinced by the new estimate. “The study suggests that the number of local populations in places where you live in the country is incorrectly estimated, but it is not clear that this necessarily implies that the national estimates of the country are incorrect.” Martin Cork At Stockholm University, Sweden.

Andrew Tame The University of Southampton in the UK will oversee WorldPop. This was one of the data sets that the study suggested, lowering the population by 53%. He says that grid-level population estimates are based on combining high-level census estimates with satellite data and modeling, and that the quality of satellite images before 2010 is known to inaccurate such estimates. “The more time we go back, the more those problems come,” he says. “I think that’s something that’s well understood.”

Láng-Ritter believes new ways are needed as data quality remains a problem. “With the data has improved dramatically within 2010-2020, it is very unlikely that the issues we identified have been fully resolved,” he says.

Stuart Giel Basten In Hong Kong, the University of Science and Technology points out that most of the team’s data comes from China and other parts of Asia and may not apply globally. “I think it’s a very big jump to say that there is a very large undercount in other places like Finland, Australia, Sweden, etc. with a very sophisticated registration system based on one or two data points.” láng-ritter admits this limitation but supports the work. “The countries we saw are very different and the rural areas we surveyed have very different characteristics, so we are confident we will provide a representative sample of the whole of the globe.”

Despite some reservations, Gietel-Basten agrees to Láng-Ritter on one point. “I certainly agree with the conclusion that we should not only invest more in rural data collection, but come up with more innovative ways to count people,” he says.

But the idea that the official world population should expand to billions of people as “unrealistic,” Gietel-Basten says. Tatem is more convincing. “If we’re really insufficient in that mass, it’s a massive news story and it goes against everything in the thousands of other datasets,” he says.

topic:

Source: www.newscientist.com