Smartphones, young students, and adult content

A new government poll showed that four out of five primary and secondary school students in Korea own smartphones and an increasing number of them are using their devices to view adult content.  The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family surveyed 10,062 students aged between 10 to 17 around the country. As shown in the accompanying table from the survey (click to see a full size version), if feature phone ownership is included 91.5 percent of all the students surveyed owned mobile phones. That compared with only 68.2 percent in a survey taken in 2007, before the arrival of smartphones in the Korean market near the end of 2009. Among elementary school students, the percentage of smartphone owners was 72.2 percent. As reported by Yonhap News, "About 16.1 percent of the students with mobile phones said they have used their phones to send or receive videos, photos and other content for adults over the recent year. The figure is up three times from 4.5 percent in 2011. About 25 percent of those surveyed said they have accessed adult content more than once a month through smartphones, Internet and various other media. The corresponding share was 18.6 percent among elementary school students while 6.9 percent were found to have accessed adult content at least once a week."