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back to article Equipping pre-teens with web mobes spreads beyond West

Egyptian parents are most eager to connect their children, with four out of five furnishing their eight-year-old children with mobiles, but the rest of the world isn't far behind. The figures come from the GSMA, representing the GSM industry, which polled 3,500 families across Japan, India, Paraguay and Egypt to see how …

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  1. Joe Montana
    FAIL

    Crime

    And they wonder why crime against kids is on the rise...

    When i was a kid, i was lucky to be carrying round under £1 in cash, a few cheap pens/pencils and maybe a few sweets...

    Now kids are running around with hundreds of pounds worth of electronics in their pockets. They represent very easy targets for opportunistic thieves.

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    1. vic 4
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      £1 I should have been so lucky

      In my day we couldn't even afford pockets, never mind anything to put in them.

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      1. Mediocrates
        Reply Icon

        Luxury!

        In my day we couldn't afford pants. Had to wear rolled-up newspapers we found in other people's garbage.

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        1. Kamal Hashmi
          Reply Icon

          We used to dream of finding old newspapers...

          ...so we could sell them for clothes to richer kids.

          We used to tie twigs round our waist then roll in mud and let it dry - brilliant clothes.

          Now, if we could find good mud...

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "but the vast majority were done face-to-face by stopping people in the street, so a good deal more reliable than the self-selecting web surveys"

    The numbers suggest they selected based on people either holding an iPhone or iPad; Egypt isn't exactly backwards, but the percentages don't really sound believable (80% of eight-year-olds with a phone).

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    1. Daniel B.
      Reply Icon

      Try Mexico, then?

      Most kids even in primary school have cellphones these days. Granted, they might not have smartphones, but bog-standard cellphones? Sure they have one.

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  3. damien 4
    FAIL

    Boolax

    Anyone who has ever spent any time in Egypt knows that probably 50 per cent of children feel lucky to get enough to eat.

    Urban Egypt, Cairo and Alex I suspect, is also rigidly separated into areas of have and have nots. Yup, probably 50 per cent of children in Zamelek have smart phones while if you went to Islamic Cairo 50 per cent of children are likely to think digital watches are pretty fancy tech.

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  4. Laurent_Z
    FAIL

    30 per cent of Egyptian children

    i call shenanigans...

    "30 per cent of Egyptian children reckon their games console is their primary point of access to the internet"

    So

    "Penetration and usage

    Egypt's Internet penetration rate grew from less than one percent in 2000, to 5% in 2004, and to 24% in 2009.[2] This ranks Egypt 110th out of 203 countries, slightly ahead of its neighbors Lebanon (24%) and Syria (20%) and slightly behind Jordan (26%)"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Egypt

    => "30 per cent of THE SURVEYED Egyptian children HAVING RICH PARENTS AND BELONGING TO THE MINORITY THAT HAVE INTERNET reckon their games console is their primary point of access to the internet BECAUSE DAD IS BROWSING THE FULL EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE ON THE COMPUTER"

    There, corrected that for you

    Not sure about the end, but then if you can say in a article that "30 per cent of Egyptian children reckon their games console is their primary point of access to the internet" I for sure can say that most egyptian dads blow off pressure by reading Hamlet...

    Just a question, that could explain the discrepency... Was the survey sent by Email, by any chance ?

    At least thank you for proving that it is all Lies, Damn Lies,... and Statistics.

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