Growing number of Japanese children playing video games on school days

More fourth-grade Japanese students play video games or mobile games on school days than children of the same age did nine years ago, a health ministry survey has shown. The rate came to 74.8% for children born in 2010, up from 65.2% in a similar survey conducted on children born in 2001 when they reached the age of 10. The health ministry conducted the latest survey last year on some 26,000 children born in 2010 and collected answers from 92% of them. Of the respondents, those who play games for less than an hour on school days accounted for 71.2% when they were first-grade students. But the proportion fell to 48.1% when they entered the fourth grade.