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Vietnam is among countries worldwide having the highest number of school students using mobile phones, a local survey has revealed.
Results of a survey by the Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City's Health Department and HCM City Medicine and Pharmacy University conducted in January 2014 at four secondary schools in the city showed that 950 out of 1,000 students are using cell phones.
Some 20 percent of the students say they feel anxious when having no cell phone in pocket, and eight percent have become addicted to using it.
About 73 percent of the students have at least two cell phones at the same time, and 70 percent daily access to various functions.
Over the past five years, the number of mobile phone users among pupils and students has been on the rise, firstly among high school students (from the 9th to 12th grades), and now among primary school pupils, especially in major cities and towns as capital Hanoi and HCM City.
Most of the survey's respondents said they used mobile phones because their parents could contact them any time they wanted, especially when the parents had to pick them up from school.
Le Anh Duong, a 6th grader from a primary school in Hanoi, told Xinhua that she has been using a mobile phone for over one year, mostly when she is waiting for her father's phone call informing her when he comes to drive her home.
"Almost half of my classmates are using mobile phones, mainly smart phones as Iphone and Samsung Galaxy. They use it as a means for calling their parents, but also for accessing the Internet and Facebook to chat, play games, listen to music and shoot videos," the girl said, adding that during the break time, groups of pupils in her school gathered in the school's yard to show off their latest video clips with classmates, or to play games.
Nguyen Khai Hoan, a 7th grader, told Xinhua (while his eyes were gazing at his mobile phone) that his Samsung cell phone has become his "close friend" for nearly two years.
"It helps me a lot in searching information for my lessons, sharing news with my friends, and entertaining me through games during my spare time," Hoan said, adding that he would feel unhappy when the cell phone is not with him.
Most of the parents who came to pick up their children at Nguyen Tat Thanh Secondary School in Hanoi told Xinhua that the mobile phones would help them and their children contact with each other very conveniently, and that they would check their children' s learning and playing schedule easily from afar.
"Honestly, I don't want my children using a cell phone. But I have two sons who are learning at two different schools. Besides studying at schools, they take some extra lessons in the evening from the tutors and I have to ride them back and forth. For this reason, I have to let them each use a cell phone," Chi Mai, a middle-aged woman who was waiting for her son at the school's entrance told reporter.
According to Phan Thi Bien, a teacher at another secondary school in Hanoi, using a cell phone would take away lots of time of the students, and distract their attention to study.
"During break time, they should relax their mind, take some simple exercises on the school's yard before continuing their lessons in class. Instead, they gaze their eyes at the cell phones to access to the internet rather entertaining them with music and video clips than updating useful news," the teacher complained, adding that some of her students even used cell phones during class time.
Teenagers can't fully control their actions. Some students shot the video clips themselves and posted them on the social network without any supervision of the adults, which resulted in unexpected negative impacts to the society, including their classmates and schools.
"When spending too much time on their cell phones, the students will move less and have less contacts with other people around, one of the reasons that may lead to their autism," said the teacher.
According to Le Tien Thanh, head of the Primary School Education Department under the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), the ministry has not yet any regulations to ban students bringing cell phones to school, only to prohibit them using the device during class time.
"The parents when buying a cell phone for their children only think that they need to call their children any time they want. Otherwise they don't care much about how and what their children actually use it," said the education official.
Education experts and psychologists advised the parents to buy simple cell phones for their children which have few entertainment functions so that the children could not spend much time on playing with it.
Statistics from the MoET revealed that currently Vietnam has over 22 million school goers of all grades, from kindergarten to university. Of whom, there are over 4.3 million kindergarteners, over 15 million school pupils, and nearly 2.2 million college and university students.
