25% of Hong Kong cellphone owners are under 13?
posted February 22nd 2005 11:25AM
Hold on a sec. We were all set to write up something clever about how a survey done by a Hong Kong newspaper found that more than a quarter of all cellphones there are owned by kids younger than 13 and that freakier still, 5.1% of phones belong to children under six years old, but then we took another look at the numbers. The news item is a little unclear (which is part of the problem), but it sounds like what's really going on is that more than 67% of households surveyed reported having at least one family member under 18 with their own cellphone, and that a quarter of those are under 13, while 5.1% of that number are under the age of six (it doesn't help that according to UN population data, only 16.3% of the population of Hong Kong is aged 0 to 14—even if 100% of them had a cellphone they'd have a hard time making up 25% of cellphone owners in a place where 86% of the population has at least one handset). Just because 25% of these households surveyed had kids with cellphones doesn't mean that 25% of cellphone owners are kids—or even that 25% of kids have cellphones.
[Via textually.org]
I guess a good chunk of the parents in Hong Kong don't much care about the conflicting reports correlating high levels of cell phone use with dangerous emissions causing all sorts of freaky things in their kids' heads.
I hardly see how widespread deployment to this age group actually helps them grow up any more effectively than previous generations did without it.
Carmi
http://writteninc.blogspot.com
I'd be set to believe just about any statistic on Hong Kong cell phone use, especially with children. It was amazing seeing every single person around you with a cell phone - seeing the 10-year-old in jeans jacket and cell phone sort of did my brain in.
As I said, I'd believe anything on that topic.
Carmi - no, I don't see how technological advancement could possibly change how people grow up, interact, and experience the world either.
Visited Hong Kong last year...Great place and very techno centric.
Their cell phone service is so much easier than the US....they don't tie phone features to the Service Provide (ie Treo 650's in US). It's also very easy to get temporary timed Cell numbers.
If the US would wake up and do the same thing here, it would cause a major increase in Cell phone sales and service usage.
Let me read the Chinese newspaper to see if I can clear this up...
The title of the original news: "Over 30% of teenagers who own cellphone are younger than 13 years old."
67% of 617 households surveyed reported having at least one family member under 18 with their own cellphone.
Over 30% of those teenagers are under 13 years old.
And of those kids, over 60% of them are 10 - 12 years old, while "7 - 9 years old" group and "under 6 years old" group each has around 20 something....
Fast forward 30 years...
"Radiation Shmadiation ... my parents had their phones practically glued to their ears, and I was no different, with two right out of the womb... one for each pair of ears."
I think #4 has an important point. Old cell phones in HK never really die. There is a huge used market and since it is so easy to get a prepaid card, why not give your kid you old cell phone with a bunch of prepaid minutes. When I was there I got a used cell phone and 1000 minutes for what I am paying for a month of service here... gotta love the free market.
The number "25%" would be much lower when you consider the fact that many 18+ adults in HK use 1+ cellphone at the same time (i.e. one for work, one for home, etc.)
I consider myself pretty good at math, but that post made my head hurt.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” -- Benjamin Disraeli
This was simply poor interpretation. I think what it's trying to say is that 25% of children under 13yrs old in HK own cell phones.
Look at it this way. 86% of the population own cell phones so 25% of that would be 21% of the population.
So that would imply that at least 21% of the population was under 13yrs old and that would assume that every one of them had a cell phone. Sorry but unless they've got the shortest average lifespan of any modern city in the world and even infants have there own cell phone it just ain't happening.
Very poor translation.
25% of the hookers are below age 13 in Hong Kong too.
THESE NUMBERS MEAN NOTHING
Alright so 67% of the population has a child under the age of 18 with a cell phone. 25% of those are under age 13. This means that 67%*.25=16.75% of FAMLIES have a child under 13 with a cell phone.
However, one must be carefull since this tells you nothing about the number of people under 13 with cell phones. First of all since we don't know the birth rate the percent of famlies with a 13 year old with a cell-phone isn't very usefull. In fact even if we knew this we wouldn't have any data on how many 13 year olds had cellphones. If, as is quite reasonable, famlies with many children were less likely to have cell-phones a much lower percentage of 13 year olds would have cell phones than we would expect from looking at the percent of families with 13 year olds and under with cellphones.
Sorry that should be 'households' not families.
In short this survey tells us near nothing. It is probably useful for advertisers who send out many advertisements to households as a unit but we shouldn't really care.
Dang that's a lot of number
I guess the reason most consumers are kids because it' BOOTLEG, they usually got the cellphone from blackmarket these day
WOW, you officially lost me about half way through that article