Japan unlearns how to use computers

Mobile phone versatility bad news for Japan's PC skills

When it comes to Japan, it's commonplace to see a lot of drivel and preconceptions pushed as fact by ill-informed Western media, particularly when it comes to stories about technology and how it is used there. As a specialist Japan journalist, it was, therefore, a pleasure to read in the Sydney Morning Herald about the very real reasons for Japan's growing PC-literacy problem.

There's no great mystery behind the reason why the proportion of Japanese people in their 20s using a PC to get online dropped from almost a quarter in 2000 to just 11.9 per cent last year - put simply, the lure of the mobile phone is to blame.

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Mobile internet

The increasing availability of mobile versions of popular sites like Yahoo (Japan's search engine of choice) and Mixi (a social-networking site without peer), combined with the fact that all mobiles have email addresses, means that there's very little need for most people to learn how to use a computer for everyday use. Throw in the alien nature of the Qwerty keyboard and Japan has a surprisingly small PC user base.

Although complex societal structural problems are also at play in the job market, the inability of most (not just many) young Japanese people to use a computer results in them being funnelled en masse into temporary part-time work, rather than the traditional office jobs-for-life their parents are likely to have. Clearly, the convenience of new technology sometimes has its downside.