Figure 4-3-1-1 International comparison of Internet addiction rates (by age and by smartphone ownership)

(Source) "Study Report on the Social Impacts of ICT Advancement," MIC (2014)

net from “communication”—such as SNS and other communication apps, which are the main content sites on the Internet, “collect information / use content”—including watching videos and reading news online, “online games” played over the Internet, and “shopping”—which typically means mail-order items ordered online and Internet auctions. In all six countries, users who said they mainly use the Internet for “communications” had a greater likelihood of Internet addiction. And in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Korea, users who said they mainly use the Internet for “online games” had somewhat higher Internet addiction rates.

The difference in Internet addiction rates in Japan between smartphone owners and non-owners was also analyzed. Since the sample size was small in this case, the results must be treated with caution. Nevertheless, “communication”-oriented users who owned smartphones were shown to have higher addiction rates.

We also analyzed the average time spent per day on mobile phones (smartphones and feature phones) and PCs. The time spent on PCs was longer than that on mobile phones in all six countries, but mobile phone usage time was nearly the same as PC usage time in South Korea and Singapore. This is another demonstration of how entrenched mobile phones are in people's lifestyles in these two countries, where smartphone proliferation is high, as stated in Section 1. We broke down these results further by the user's primary Internet usage purpose and found that in all the countries users oriented toward "online games" tended to use PCs longer. One characteristic in Japan is that "communication" users spent an average of 103 minutes on their mobile phones, which was significantly longer than users in the other segments.

These results suggest that Japanese users oriented toward SNS and other communications spend more time on smartphones and other devices and have relatively higher addiction rates.

### b. Merits of SNS and smartphone use

In general, many users in all six countries said the merits of SNS use were “able to get information quickly,” “able to get lots of information,” and “increased opportunities to communicate with family, partners, friends, and acquaintances.” A fair number of users also cited “increased new friends and acquaintances” and “reestablished contact with old friends” as benefits (Figure 4-3-1-2).

## (2) Importance of Internet literacy

### a. Problems with flaming—insulting and hostile posts on social media

Flaming has attracted attention in recent years on social media because of trouble arising from insulting and hostile posts. The frequency of Google searches in Japan for “Twitter enjo [flaming]” and “Facebook enjo” have steadily escalated since around 2010. Searches for “Twitter enjo” in particular have skyrocketed since 2013, illustrating that flaming drew increased attention in 2013.

### b. User attitudes toward Internet literacy

## (i) Anonymous use of SNS and awareness of being identified

The use of leading SNS and the use of anonymous names versus real names on SNS was analyzed for all six countries. Facebook usage was lower in Japan than in the other countries, but in all six countries many users use their real name on Facebook, since it recommends users register under their real name. However, over 70 percent of Japanese users of Twitter, which does not make any specific recommendations to register with real names, use the service anonymously, a noticeably higher percentage than in the other countries (Figure 4-3-1-3).

In relation to the high degree of anonymous SNS use and the flaming incidents mentioned above use, more than half of Japanese users (60 percent)—when asked “do you think you might not be identified if you use SNS anonymously?”—recognized the possibility of being