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One in three Aussie kids have a mobile phone

aussie-kids-mobile-phones — Image by FunkyFocus from Pixabay

Is there anything more likely to bring on a panic attack than misplacing your mobile phones? It’s around the house somewhere, isn’t it. You tried calling the number but alas, the battery is flat.

Those of you who cannot bear to be parted with your mobile phone might not know that 33% of Australian children between six and 13 own one. Another 14% of Aussie kids have access to a mobile – for example, if they are going out alone, Mum might lend them hers. These numbers were collated in 2020 by the Australian Media and Communications Authority (ACMA).

I texted a mother of three to see what’s allowed in her house. We’ll call her Outraged Mother of Three (OMOT). She replied (on one of her 4.4 devices), that all of her kids (Grades 3-8) have phones.

“The youngest has a phone but it is not hooked up to a Sim or Wi-Fi. It was just the spare and now it’s lost.

“Due to excess use of said phones our children now no longer bring the phones to (our weekend retreat). They also have limitations on when they can use their phones.”

If you didn’t know, most Queensland schools do not allow children to use their mobiles during school hours.

OMOT says the main reason her children have phones is purely to be able to contact her, particularly when school is out.

ACMA’s research shows that children primarily use smart phones for playing games, using apps, watching videos, texting and keeping in touch with family/friends.

OMOT said one outcome of her kids having their own phones is they no longer watch TV, preferring YouTube videos.

“They also find it as a really good way to have group chats. Both of my older kids have group phone messaging with their mates from school.”

The impetus for revisiting mobile use in Australia (apart from changing last week’s distressing subject), was a blog I wrote seven years ago. In that column (May 2014), I recounted losing my mobile while on holiday in New Zealand. It was a new phone on a two-year contract, so losing it was a bit of a disaster.

The good news was that a Kiwi out jogging found it lying in the long grass outside my nephew’s house. His enterprising wife looked up the call log and dialled my wife’s mobile (as we were filling up the hire car and looking at travel insurance options). A 20 km detour later I was reunited with my then new android phone.

In 2021, after relying on them during Covid, Australians (and their children), are increasingly bound to their devices. They use them for a wide range of business, personal and entertainment communications. They send and receive emails, send and receive texts, check the odds on the footie, do internet banking and watch videos. They might check in on Facebook and interact with ‘friends’, send PM’s (private messages) to their close friends and maybe watch a music video or two. Very occasionally, they might ring someone up and have a convo (conversation).

The technology is amazing: really, it is. Thirty years ago when you were in a community choir, the choir director handed out printed scores on rehearsal night. The director would have ordered them from a music publisher and then waited weeks until they arrived in the letterbox. Now we can find and download scores (on our phones, even), print them out, and also find (free) audio rehearsal files.

The irony is that few people use the full capabilities of a smart device. I was chatting to a doctor at a barbecue when a helicopter flew overhead.

“That’ll be the rescue helicopter,” she said. She showed me an app on her phone which verified that it was indeed the rescue helicopter. The app showed where it had come from and where it was going (and when it would arrive). That’s no ordinary app, I’ll grant you, but it shows what is possible. In the days when we could travel the world, language apps were all the go. Just wave the phone at the waitress in Tokyo (who would hear a Siri-type voice intoning Shīfūdo ni arerugī ga arimasu (I’m allergic to seafood).

In 2014, when I wrote Hold the Phones, there were 11.9 million smart phones in Australia. Deloitte’s Mobile Nation report showed there were 17.9 million in circulation in 2019. It’s not just smart phones – the average internet user has 4.4 devices they use to interact with the net. The most popular devices were smart TVs, wearable devices and voice-controlled smart speakers.

See how you go with this list (5/8 for me).

Australians spend three hours a day using their smartphones;
94% take their phones with them when leaving the house;
Almost 25% watch live TV on their phones at least once a week;
23% stream film/TV series weekly;
48% check their mobile phones at least once every 30 minutes;
71% feel safer when they have their phone with them;
Just over 90% took at least one active step in on-linesecurity
53% worry about over-reliance/addiction to their devices;

The results of a survey commissioned by ACMA showed that “nearly all Australians” (99%) accessed the internet in the previous six months in 2020 (up from 90% in 2019). I assume this includes the approx 1.7 million or so kids aged 6 to 13.

Nevertheless, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 2.9 million Australians were not on-line because of affordability, location or lack of digital literacy. Who knows how those people struggled last year.

ACMA’s survey (by Roy Morgan) found that Covid lock downs contributed to a significant increase in Internet-based activities. The use of communications apps soared, with 72% of Australian adults using one (up from 63% in 2019). Facebook Messenger was the most popular app (66%), followed by Zoom (43%).

There has been exponential growth in mobile data consumption – 9MB a month in 2018, according to the ABS, but growing at 40% a year.

So yes, the person opposite you staring at a screen on the commuter train is probably catching up on Mare of Easttown. This would account for the lack of eye contact and casual conversation and the panic when she realises she has gone past her stop.

It’s all very well to learn that children are already tech-savvy, but we need to find better ways to connect older Australians to the digital world. A report by the eSafety Commissioner found that 8% of Australia’s 8 million people aged 50 and over are “digitally disengaged”. This means that 640,000 older Australians (74% of them over 70), do not use the internet at all. Moreover, 6% of this target group showed no interest at all in improving “digital literacy”.

(By contrast, my 94 year old Godfather began using an Ipad long before I did. Ed)

As this research found, family and friends can play an important part in helping older Australians learn some digital tricks.

It seems like a no-brainer – get those digital-savvy kids to give Oma and Opa a few lessons – after they’ve done their homework, of course.

FOMM Back Pages:

Last week: I’m still not holding my breath.

Demise Of The Fixed-Line Home Phone

fixed-line-phones — Australian Communications and Media Authority Communications report 2017–18.

The landline is ringing. A saxophone riff from a Men at Work song plays in my head (‘who can it be now?’). Despite my better judgement, I pick up. It goes something like this. (Pause) “This is Nicole from Australian National Broadband. We have been trying to get in touch with you as we are soon going to disconnect your landline, Press 1 now to speak to a technician.”

I don’t press 1 and after 5 seconds the call disconnects. Poor Nicole (and apologies to the two women I know named Nicole). She has been robo calling our number without success for at least 18 months. How will you describe that on your CV, Nicole? (2018-2019: scam robo call voiceover).

Once again, synchronicity strikes. Just when I decided to write about the demise of the landline, I see it is National Scam Awareness Week (August 12-16). There are serious reasons for raising awareness of telephone and internet scams, as they are costing Australians about $1 billion a year.

Scamwatch estimates that NBN scams alone are ripping $110,000 a month from people who should have tuned in for NSAW last year (when the figure was $37,000 a month).

Few real people call our landline these days. Like everyone I surveyed for this essay, we average about 15 telemarketing calls or phone scams per week. They are often the 6.50pm calls, just as you are sitting down to eat. It’s someone in an offshore call centre, trying to sell you something. Most people just hang up.

My elder sister in New Zealand always calls the landline, as does John, our oldest friend in the village. They belong to a cohort who does not have mobile phones. They persist, some would say depend on, the dying communication form of a fixed copper wire telephone line.

The 2017-2018 report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said that 36% (6.7 million) of Australians have scrapped their fixed home phone line and rely on a mobile service. Some may also have a VoIP (voice over internet protocol) phone as part of their National Broadband Network deal. There is one vital difference between a landline and VoIP. The major issue with a ‘landline’ that comes with an NBN package is that it stops working when you have a power failure. (This is also the case for a hands-free phone plugged into the power, rather than a dedicated phone wired into the wall).

The latter still works when there is a blackout – you can ring Fred on the other side of town to see if his power is out too. Useful stuff like that.

Nevertheless, fixed-line use declined 7% in 2017-2018, continuing a long-term trend (although 10m people still have one). One could suggest that people are letting go of their landlines in favour of mobiles and reducing their monthly phone/internet bill. I suspect people no longer trust their landline. As FOMM reader John No 1 said: “The value of the telephone as a means of communication is being diminished because it is impossible to know if a caller is genuine…”

Meanwhile, eight out of 10 Australians own a smartphone – 64% more than five years ago. A smart phone is infinitely more useful than a one-function landline. Smart phones users can make voice calls, send texts or use apps for messaging or voice /video calls). And, as we all know, you can browse the internet, watch streaming TV, make videos, take pictures of your cat to put on Facebook, use it as a compass or a navigation device, tune your guitar, turn it into a metronome or use it as an alarm clock.

A few FOMM readers responded to my question: why do you still have a landline? John No 2 (no mobile), says he wants to stay with a fixed-line phone because mobile reception is poor where he lives. He is also a bit peeved that after paying for a silent number, he still gets nuisance calls. Another reader told me she uses her landline exclusively for her counselling service so she can be ‘present’ (as opposed to being out and about and distracted if a client calls on the mobile).

Ian says he ended up with a VoIP phone when he changed to the NBN, but neither he nor Mrs Ian uses it, mainly because Telstra/Optus were unable to transfer his old number. They prefer to use mobiles, as they had been doing for years before NBN showed up. Ian says that until the change was forced upon him, he’d had a landline (and the same Telstra number), for 33 years.

I tend to avoid using the home phone, instead favouring text messages. She Who Likes To Talk To People always tries calling first.

“What’s the point,” I say. “It will just go to voice mail or they will get a garbled 10-second text message transcribed from voice.”

Example: “It’s Nog here, I be roundson to pick up cheers.”

The ease of text messaging (and the fast response when you use the Facebook app Messenger), has lulled us into a world where we communicate primarily by text and email (both formats which can be easily misinterpreted), in lieu of actually talking to each other.

A while ago, I realised this form of communication was the equivalent of holing up in the castle and sending a messenger on horseback to tell Princess Desiree in yonder palace that she is the fairest in the land.

Who would know if the fair damsel received the gilded message and what happened next (mayhap she was smitten by the messenger and they rode off together into the darkening forest (cue Game of Thrones theme).

Yes, so I decided I would have a telephone conversation with someone every week. I’m behind schedule, but I have excuses.

It is probably fair in National Scam Awareness Week to observe that mobile phone users are also plagued by scam calls, robo calls and telemarketers. Nevertheless, Australians continue their love affair with mobile technology. In Australia, there are now 34.54 million mobile services in operation, compared with 31.09 million in 2013, the last time I wrote on this topic. ACMA says the volume of data downloaded on mobile networks increased fivefold between 2014 and 2018. We can probably attribute a lot of it to Netflix (50% of Australians have a subscription), and Stan (13%).

The relatively slow growth in new mobile use suggests demand has peaked. Still, that’s about 10 million more mobiles than there are people. Given this huge target market, it seems likely the scammers and hard-sell merchants will keep finding sinister new ways to catch us off guard.

Robo calls are as big a problem in the US as the opioid crisis, mass shootings and Donald Trump. The regulators have been pressing the telecommunications industry to do something about it since 2014. In response, the industry has developed a solution to stop robo calls and ‘spoofing’. The latter refers to criminals and unscrupulous people altering the calling number of their outbound calls in order to deceive the person receiving the call. For example, the call may show up in your caller ID as your neighbour or a relative. The industry has invented a new technology standard to defeat spoofing and has given it an intriguing name based on two acronyms – STIR/SHAKEN.

Sounds like something you’d order at the bar when taking Miss Moneypenny on a date.

Further reading FOMM back pages: https://bobwords.com.au/friday-on-my-mind/

Why political parties can spam without penalty

call-centre-spam — Call centre image by Richard Blank https://flic.kr/p/dZhyjR

I should feel miffed, being one of the 14.4 million Australian mobile phone owners who did not receive an unsolicited text message from the political party led by the aspiring Member for Herbert, Clive Palmer.

Some of my Facebook friends, and even those not on Facebook, let the world know in no uncertain terms what they thought of receiving an unsolicited text from the United Australia Party (UAP), previously known as Palmer United Party (PUP).

Alas, I was not one of the 5.6 million people who received texts, so had to rely on second and third-hand reports to tell me they were (a) brief) and (b) geo-targeted, (the ABC’s example of a text sent to S-E Victoria promised fast trains for Melbourne – ‘one hour to the CBD from up to 300 kms away.’) Another forwarded to me by a Queensland reader promised a tax reduction of 20% for those in regional Queensland.

Those who were affronted by receiving the unsolicited text complained, but it fell on deaf ears because (a) it is not illegal and (b) it’s January and everyone is at the beach.

When asked about the electronic media campaign, Clive Palmer told the ABC the Privacy Act allowed for registered political parties to contact Australians by text.

“We’ll be running text messages as we get closer to the election because it’s a way of stimulating debate in our democracy,” he said.

Despite Mr Palmer and AUP receiving some 3,000 complaints, he told the ABC more than 265,000 people clicked through to the link ‘and stayed for more than one minute.’

The text should have come as no surprise, as United Australia Party has been letterboxing electorates for months with the party’s distinctive yellow colours and prominent use of the leader’s image framed against the Australian flag.

As I temporarily forgot that Mr Palmer re-badged and re-launched his previously de-registered party last year, I did an internet search for PUP. All I came up with was the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, a Canadian punk rock band and the internet acronym Potential Unwanted Programs (how fitting-Ed.)

It was an easy mistake to make, so thoroughly had Clive Palmer embodied the fledgling PUP (which he de-registered after serving only one term and ‘retired’ from politics prior to elections in 2016).

But last year Clive Palmer changed the name of the party he founded and under whose name he served as the Member for Fairfax from 2013-2016. As it happens, he re-used the historical name of the UAP, under which Prime Ministers Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies served. He told The Australian last year that the re-establishment of a UAP was ‘a significant milestone in Australian politics’.

So it is true, alas, that registered political parties can text people they don’t know without fear of reprisal. All they need is a list and Mr Palmer, who says he does not own the list or know where it came from, told the ABC you can buy such a list from ‘any advertising agency in Sydney’.

According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the Spam Act allows registered political parties to send commercial emails and SMS messages to individuals as long as the message identifies who authorised the sending of the message.

Likewise, we are all fair game to receive unsolicited telephone calls at home leading up to an election (yes, I’ve had a few of those). You’d wonder why, though, given that telemarketing or cold calling has a 2% conversion rate.

ACMA says: “Opinion polling calls and calls from political parties, independent members of parliament, or candidates for election that contain a commercial element—that is, they are trying to sell you something or are seeking donations—are permitted by the Do Not Call Rules and may be made even if your number is listed on the Do Not Call Register”.

If that seems wrong to you, you can write, complain and generally make a nuisance of yourself by contacting ACMA. Tell them I sent you.

We have been dog-sitting/house-sitting in Brisbane, my laptop has been in the PC workshop for a week and it’s been too humid to think about much. So apart from tennis and binge-watching The Bureau, we have been mostly cut off from social media and its twittering masses.

The reason I knew about the UAP texting campaign was that a friend, who I will call Irate Step-mother of Three, cc’d me the reply she sent to Mr Palmer’s party. It was blistering.

Also invading our telephones and in boxes over the Silly Season were messages from people running ATO scams (someone calls and pretends to be from the ATO, saying things like – if you don’t send us money immediately you will be arrested (and so on).

The recent round of scams prompted the ATO to provide an update and a warning on its website in December.

The golden rule, be it a scam, a marketing call or a (legitimate) electioneering contact), just hang up. You don’t even have to say ‘hello’.

As for unsolicited texts, you can delete and block sender, although you might be busy. As a marketing strategy, texting is gaining favour – the industry claims a 98% ‘open’ rate (email is 22%).

Professor of Law at University of Queensland Graeme Orr reminded us that other political parties use this tactic. Writing in The Conversation he said the Labor Party sent out texts ahead of the 2016 election purporting to be from Medicare itself, as part of its ‘Mediscare’ campaign (the LNP had talked about privatisation). This ploy led to a tightening of rules and a new offence of ‘impersonating a Commonwealth body’.

In breaking news yesterday, UAP sent out another text promising that if they were in government, they would ban the practice!

I take ACMA’s ruling on political texting and emailing quite personally. As my followers would know, I am obliged to publish a disclaimer at the end of every post where I offer subscribers the chance to opt out. All bloggers and purveyors of marketing emails and newsletters (don’t they have a habit of worming their way into your inbox), have to do this.

Registered political parties, however, can do whatever they like, so long as they don’t pretend the email/text came from somebody else. It is a travesty (something that fails to represent the values and qualities that it is intended to represent) – Cambridge Dictionary.

Now that I’ve been presented with a squeaky clean hard drive (even my contacts lists have vanished, awaiting an (edited) backup, this is the perfect opportunity to do a little electronic house-cleaning. Like everyone, I subscribed to far too many seemingly promising websites and newsletters in 2018. Yikes, some of them email every day!

The best solution is scroll down to the end of the document where you will find in the fine print an option to unsubscribe, or as the Urban Dictionary defines it: To take yourself out of a convo (conversation) or email because it’s boring or has lost its initial humour.

That was an explanation, people, not an invitation.

Since you read this far, my subscriber drive to cover website maintenance costs is doing quite well but you only have till the end of January if you want to make a subscriber payment. Follow this link (or not)

Bedside manners

DSCN8090 — Bedside table – Photo by Bob Wilson

So I’m visiting John in hospital and it’s just as well I didn’t come the day before, he says, because he was in a world of pain. Knee operations are like that. Hospital rooms evoke all kinds of memories, most of them not very pleasant, even a private room with a TV, telephone and a view of the painless world.
John was telling how his daughter phoned on his world of pain day to see how he was. The phone, on the bedside table, just out of reach, rang and rang. Somebody had moved the bedside table so they could set up the contraption that monitors one’s vitals.

Where are the inventors?

There’s a small fortune to be made for someone who invents and promotes a bedside cabinet suited to the largely bed-ridden. It may well be that someone already owns the patents or has actually produced a prototype. They would go well in hospitals.
The standard hospital brand tends to be a metal box on castors, usually with two (lockable) drawers and a cupboard to store your clothes, shoes and toiletries.
What is really needed, if you happen to be supine in bed and unable to roll over and reach out, is a bedside table that will come to you. I’m not an inventor, designer or cabinet maker, but I envisage the patient with a remote control pressing ‘turn left’ and with a barely perceptible whir, the bedside table obediently turns so it is facing the bed. The patient presses ‘rise” and the table rises, until the patient presses ‘stop’. ‘Open top drawer’, and the top drawer slides open, to offer an array of things one might need: reading glasses, hearing aids, wallet, mobile phone, private medical insurance card.
Those of you quick on the uptake will immediately see the broader commercial opportunities of such a user-friendly bedside table. The home model would have a built in power board for mobile phone, e-reader, MP3 player or whatever gadget you keep in the bedside cabinet that might require recharging. Ahem.

But isn’t that dangerous?

At this stage of musing it is important to note the debunking of the myth that one risks brain cancer by keeping a mobile phone next to the bed. The ABC’s Catalyst program is under attack for a program this week linking Wi-Fi and mobile phone use with brain cancer. According to the Australian government’s radiation safety agency ARPANSA, there is “no established evidence” that low levels of radiofrequency radiation from these devices cause health effects. The Conversation, an excellent source of analysis by academics and journalists, asked experts for their opinions. https://theconversation.com/do-wi-fi-and-mobile-phones-really-cause-cancer-experts-respond-54881
If you search ‘bedside table’ you will find hundreds of designs (and prices) but nearly all follow the basic principle of a night-stand – a vertical cabinet with two or three drawers or two drawers and a cupboard. Once you’re in bed, only the top drawer is easily reachable and of course every time you lean over to look for something, there’s a risk you will knock something off the top (where many of us keep things like books, reading glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, a glass of water, e-reader, wallet, and so on – not unlike the illustration above.
The smart bedside table would have a tissue dispenser built in to the side (also touch of a button) to free up space on the top of the cabinet.

Bedside cabinets for the ages

Bedside tables (the typical bedroom suite comes with two), are not designed with age groups in mind.
The 18-35 groups could get by with a wooden chair, on which to place current reading (e.g. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer, On the Road by Jack Kerouac), and the essential accoutrements of the young and impulsive. The 36-49 groups used to favour clock radios so they could get up with the lark listening to classic FM. These days it is likely to be a smart phone alarm and an MP3 player programmed to play your early morning playlist. Books may include: The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Povey or conversely, Summer on a Fat Pig Farm by Matthew Evans.

We elders need a lot of space on the table top. There’s the aforementioned hearing aids, a glass of water (to drink), a glass of water (for our teeth), one or even two of those Monday to Sunday prescription boxes so you don’t forget to take what the doctor ordered. There’s often a torch so those of us with cataracts don’t walk into walls or doors.
The over-65 top drawer is likely to contain a plastic folder with five or six prescriptions repeats, boxes of medications, tubes of ointment for various aches and pains and itches, several old watches, cufflinks (who wears cufflinks?), pebbles, feathers and shells collected from the last beach walk, a Swiss army knife, a pedometer with a flat battery, hearing aid batteries, a scattering of coins, a few buttons that ought to be in the button tin, the thumb splint from last time you had a bout of tendonitis, a well out of date asthma puffer, a well-thumbed copy of Meditations for Men Who Do Too Much, five bookmarks and a card with all your pins and passwords disguised as telephone numbers.

How are we doing so far?
The second drawer of your typical bedside table might be the place you keep bulkier objects like a wheat bag (put in microwave for 40 seconds and apply to aching body part), the leather writing compendium a well-meaning friend gave you for your 21st birthday and which you cannot bear to throw away, even though it is a mid-20th century curio containing five old address books and a Valentine from 1974.
The bottom drawer is where you should keep a pouch containing important personal papers so you can grab it and run if there is a fire.
If your bedside table has a bottom drawer or a cupboard, you could try a psychological experiment: Every Sunday night, list everything that has happened in the news this week that you don’t want to think about and lock it away.
A year later you can read these 52 pages: Cardinal Pell. Who was he again? Oh, the asylum seeker babies. The Hague ruled on that, didn’t they? Anyway, they all went live in New Zealand.
A cluttered bedside table can be a trigger for allergens. At least once a month you should throw everything on the bed and give the cabinet a jolly good clean. Then put back less stuff. Go on, you can do it – who needs two watches that don’t work, an empty floss container or a tube of Dencorub with a 2009 use by date?

Why bedside tables, Bob?

Some of you might wonder why I didn’t write about asylum seeker babies or Tim Minchin’s song about the cardinal, or that proposal by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry – (journalist Paul Syvret called it a ‘brain fart’) – to turn age pension payments into a loan, repayable on the sale of the pensioners’ home.

As you can clearly see, especially if you zoom to 200% and examine the photo above, I had other things on my mind.