Mobile Phones Keep Italy's Kids Close to Mamma

Italian parents are rearing a generation of mobile phone slaves, according to the conclusions of a study published yesterday.

A survey of children aged between nine and 10 found 56% owned mobile phones. Of these:

68% never switched the phones off;

80% kept them on in church;

86% kept them on during lessons.
"Children are using their mobiles early, badly and too much," said the coordinator of the research project, Francesco Pira, a lecturer at the University of Trieste. "This is true even by comparison with other European countries, where the use of cellphones seems to be more selective".

To some extent the findings reflect the love affair between Italians of all ages and the mobile phone. The rate of subscriptions in Italy is forecast to top 90% of the population this year - one of the highest in the world.

But mobile phone use among the young also owes something to the close, and often suffocating, bonds between children and their parents in Italy.

Mr Pira found that, in four out of every 10 cases, the mobile had been given to the child by his or her parents and that more than 40% of calls were made to either the mother or father.

"This is a way for parents to extend the umbilical cord linking them to their children," said Anna Oliverio Ferraris, a lecturer in psychology at Sapienza University in Rome.

Another psychologist, Gustavo Pietropolli Charmet, agreed that the purpose of the mobile was to allow Italian mothers, above all, to "monitor the children when they stay at home or go to school, and later to monitor them when they grow up and go to discos."

But, he said, this was "an inevitable consequence of the long-distance relationship between children and working mothers."

The study found that, among the children they interviewed who did not own mobiles, 100% wanted one.