TOKYO - A JAPANESE government panel is calling on parents and schools to help limit the use of mobile phones by children to prevent them from being sucked into cyberspace crimes.

The advisory council on education made the proposal to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda as children become more vulnerable to crimes involving dating websites and bullying in online school forums.

The recommendations were approved this week, with Mr Fukuda questioning the need for children to possess mobile phones at all.

The panel said it would urge 'parents, schools and other people concerned to cooperate in preventing elementary and junior high school students from using mobile phones unless it is necessary'.

While about a third of Japanese primary school pupils aged seven to 12 use mobile phones, by the time they get to high school that figure rises to 96per cent, according to a government survey last December.

Some youngsters have become victims of Internet crimes. In one case, children sent in their own snapshots to a website and ended up being threatened for money, said Mr Masaharu Kuba, a government official overseeing the initiative, yesterday.

There are also fears that youngsters could reveal personal information, making them prey for fraudsters and paedophiles.

Besides crime, the government is also concerned about youngsters spending long hours exchanging mobile phone e-mail messages and suffering other negative effects of cellphone use, Mr Kuba added.

Japanese mobile phone companies offer a service using a different delivery protocol from SMS, by which e-mail messages with embeddable links can be sent from one cellphone to another, with phones having their own unique e-mail addresses.

Some children are spending numerous hours at night e-mailing their friends via their phones.

One fad is 'the 30-minute rule', by which a child who does not respond to an e-mail message within half an hour is targeted and picked on by other schoolmates.

The panel is also asking Japanese makers to develop mobile phones with only the talk function, and with GPS - or global positioning systems - a satellite-navigation feature that can help ensure a child's safety.

Telecommunications minister Hiroya Masuda said yesterday that electronics makers must develop cellphones that are safe for children.

'The ministry will naturally be stepping up efforts to ask makers to develop phones with limited features,' he said on nationally-televised news.

Most mobile phones in Japan are sophisticated gadgets offering 3G high-speed Internet access.

They allow users to do on cellphones almost everything that can be done on personal computers, including messaging, online shopping, social networking, searches and video games.

But cellphones tend to be more personal tools than personal computers and parents find it increasingly difficult to monitor what their children are doing with their phones, said Mr Kuba.

'Japanese parents are giving cellphones to their children without giving it enough thought,' Mr Kuba said.

However, as some Japanese schoolchildren commute long distances by train and bus, parents rely on cellphones to keep in touch. They typically pay 4,000yen (S$50) a month for cellphone charges per child.

The government will take the proposals into consideration in working out its policy guidelines next month.

The advisory council also proposed that English be made compulsory for children in their third year at elementary school, instead of the current first year at junior high school.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS