January 2013
The 2012 Survey on the Way of Life and Attitudes of Junior and Senior High School Students (Part I)
Miki Masaki
In summer 2012, NHK carried out the fifth “Survey on the Way of Life and Attitudes of Junior and Senior High School Students,” a survey project that covers junior and senior high school students as well as their parents across Japan. It aims to grasp the lives, values, relationships with friends and parents, states of minds, views of society, and other attitudes of junior and senior high students, using wide range of questions and longitudinal comparison. In this first report of the three-part series focuses on the school life and relationships with friends. Regarding the school life, more than 90% feel happy about it, and there was an increase in the percentage of students who feel that their homeroom teachers “understand them very well,” compared to 10 years ago.
Those who own mobile phones account for 49% of junior high students and 97% of senior high students, and 60% of junior high students and 96% of senior high students use emails, with many of them interacting with friends through the Internet. Besides, 32% of senior high students have online friends whom they have not met in person.
Meanwhile, the number of senior high and junior high students who talk to friends about their problems has been declining over the past 20 years, and more students feel that they had better refrain from becoming too assertive and “gauge the atmosphere” to follow the majority now than 10 years ago, indic ating a change in their way of thinking regarding relationships with friends.