THREE out of four of Singapore's tech-mad youngsters may be just a bit too fond of their electronic gadgets, suffering physically and socially as a result.
In a survey of 600 polytechnic and university students, three-quarters admitted to constantly fiddling with their mobile phones and other electronic gadgets.
Many of the respondents aged 17 to 25 checked their phones or laptops every few seconds, and took those gadgets with them wherever they went.
More than two in five, for instance, took their mobile phones everywhere - including the toilet. And one in 50 respondents admitted to getting chided 'all the time' for ignoring those around them in favour of their gadgets.
Miss Christine Tan, a final-year undergraduate at Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, said her four-man team decided to look into the issue because 'we saw it in ourselves and our peers...where nothing else matters when we are on our gadgets'.
While technology had many proven benefits, like allowing users to work away from the office and increasing productivity, Miss Tan and her team wanted to red-flag what they believed was a rise in the number of young people so compulsively dependent on their gadgets that they suffered negative side effects.
The most obvious were physical pains such as aches in the head, neck and thumbs.
Raffles Hospital clinical director for pain management, Dr Ho Kok Yuen, said he had seen an increase in the number of younger people suffering from chronic pain - a condition earlier seen only in people aged 60 and above.
'Most people who continue using their gadgets do not realise that their usage patterns can have a very serious impact on their physical well-being,' said Dr Ho.
Those with the condition, which is increasingly being referred to as 'gadget over-dependency', may be affected in less obvious ways as well.
According to a New York Times article, those constantly exposed to a deluge of information find themselves unable to focus on tasks at hand, and also face increased stress.
Long-term exposure to a constant diet of text messages, Facebook updates and Twitter posts, say neuroscientists in the Times report, can 'rewire' human brains to the point that key areas such as analytical ability and creativity might potentially be impaired.
Compulsive usage, said psychologist Nicholas Lim, also 'robs you of the ability to know what controls you and what you control'.
This has the ring of familiarity for private school student Lynn Lim, 22.
'A few years ago, I was at an interview for a part-time job, and there was an alert on my phone. I took it out, checked the message and replied because that is what I always do. When I looked up, the look on the interviewer's face was priceless... No, I didn't get the job.
The S'porean identity in a globalised era by Debbie Soon, For The Straits Times
IN HIS book Lexus And The Olive Tree, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argues that there are two countervailing forces in globalisation.
On the one hand, there is 'Lexus', which stands for modernisation. And on the other, there is the 'olive tree', which represents the human need for identity and belonging.
Globalisation often introduces a sense of dislocation. The challenge is how these two countervailing forces can be balanced. Singapore has to balance its global city aspirations with its citizens' need for a sense of rootedness.
Singapore has opened its arms to globalisation. Many Singaporeans have ventured abroad and made successful careers for themselves. The country has also opened its doors to foreign talent, to address flagging birth rates and an ageing population. But many Singaporeans feel a sense of displacement as a result of the influx of foreigners, used as they are to being greeted by a familiar local face at the hawker centre or a familiar local accent at the supermarket.
The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) conducted a survey in December 2009 to assess how Singapore citizens were coping with the economic recession. When asked to choose as many as they wished of the six social and psychological strategies of support listed in the survey, 53 per cent of respondents said they would lower their expectations, 48 per cent that they would change their mindsets, 32 per cent strengthen family bonds, and 12 per cent turn to religion. In the search for a sense of surety in the uncertain times brought on by globalisation, Singaporeans will turn to kith and kin and their religion.
Will the identity for Singaporeans change as globalisation continues? How will Singaporeans define themselves in terms of the communal, local or global?
On the level of the communal, it is a natural instinct of human beings to draw close to their ethnic, religious or familial community. There are signs indicating the continuing importance of racial and religious identity in the hearts and minds of Singaporeans.
Where religion is concerned, the evidence ranges from reports of Christian groups scrambling for worship space to the decision by Taoist leaders to conduct a census of their followers to register their growing membership. And where race is concerned, there was the campaign waged by bicultural Chinese against reducing the weightage of the mother tongue in the PSLE, and the concerns expressed by Malays that their community might be shrinking following the release of the advance census data.
Where the family is concerned, the conclusion of the 2009 State of the Family report by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports and National Family Council suggests that most Singaporeans have strong family ties.
At the national level, the 2009 IPS National Orientations of Singaporeans Survey, which measured the emotional bonds of Singapore citizens, found healthy and stable levels of national pride and loyalty.
Singaporeans have managed to combine communal and national identities. The sense of racial and religious identity can in fact bolster the sense of nationhood. Thus, Singapore has so far successfully managed to subsume race and religion into its national identity. As such, there is largely no conflict between racial or religious identity and national identity.
Racial and religious ties build what Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government calls 'bonding social capital' by bringing people together on the basis of similarity. There is also a need to build 'bridging social capital' - which in Singapore's case means fostering better ties between individuals from different racial and religious backgrounds.
The universal nature of music, sport and even food provides platforms for the building of bridging social capital. The gradual broadening of space for political and artistic expression bodes well for the development of other identities.
On the global level, Singaporeans are exposed to cultures outside their country - through the Internet, cable television and other media. But the same technologies provide also the means to build stronger communal and national ties. It is now easier to keep in touch with friends, family and the local scene while abroad. Lexus has provided a means for growing bigger and stronger olive trees.
There is no question that Singaporeans will find something to hold on to as globalisation advances. The long lines for auditions with South Korean talent management company JYP and outside mega-churches, as well as strong demand for National Day Parade tickets, suggest that Singaporeans have managed to find a balance among their communal, local and global identities. The future of the Singaporean identity hinges on the mix we choose for ourselves.
The writer is a researcher with the Institute of Policy Studies.
Refer to the article below about how living in Singapore can be improved.
Singapore not as perfect as it seems, according to urban planning expert
By Tan Hui Yee
SINGAPORE is often cited as one of the world's more liveable cities, but a stroll through Kampong Glam, Little India, Tanjong Pagar and other downtown areas led one visiting expert to a more muted conclusion.
Yes, there is much the Republic is doing right, much the rest of the world can envy, but the country is falling down in one key area - it is not thinking small enough.
Child-sized, to be precise, because cities must first be liveable for kids before they can be liveable for all, according to urban planning consultant Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard, who was in town recently for the World Cities Summit.
And while Singapore is clearly streets ahead in terms of its crime rate, the walks around town she undertook over four days showed up other problems.
She found that traffic in downtown Singapore is a tad too heavy and street- level crossings inadequate for children to wander around on their own.
In her view, a city needs to facilitate such independent access for children if it wants to be truly liveable.
Child-friendly cities thrive because everyone needs fundamentally the same things, like an accessible environment and rich social life. By focusing on meeting the needs of children - one of the most vulnerable and physically weakest groups in the community - the city can get its basics right.
But that does not mean ever more kiddie rides, cartoon murals or playgrounds.
'The ideal play area for children is the city itself,' says Dr Crowhurst Lennard, 65, the founder of the International Making Cities Liveable Council, which is based in Portland, Oregon.
Generally, it is a bad idea to relegate children to just children's facilities because they learn best when able to freely mingle with and observe adults in an everyday setting. And catering to children is not that hard.
'On a simple level, it is a matter of walkability. Children have to be able to get around safely on their own as early as possible and explore their environment.
'That means it has to be safe not only from traffic, but also a good socially safe environment where there are familiar adults along the way who recognise them and speak to them - people of different ages,' she said.
So, buildings, roads, parks and street furniture should be designed to inspire imagination, invite exploration and serve multiple uses.
For example, steps should be comfortable enough to invite seating, walls should be low enough to be 'climbed on, sat on, or walked along', and window ledges and planter ledges should be broad enough to double as seats. Meanwhile, public art should welcome children instead of being plastered with 'no climbing' or 'no touching' signs.
'All kinds of public art should be meaningful and understandable to children. They should tell children about the history and traditions of the city. And they should be able to be played on.'
She cites, as a good example, the bronze sculptures of The River Merchants by local artist Aw Tee Hong, which details the lives of traders by the SingaporeRiver when the island was under colonial rule. Passers-by continually stop to touch the sculptures and clamber on to pose for photographs.
And our bright shiny malls, centre of much of Singapore life? They get a firm thumbs down.
Malls are increasingly becoming meeting spots and teenage hang-outs as they are being planned around transport nodes, but Dr Crowhurst Lennard says they are 'not ideal' as a public space given the restrictions on what can occur there.
Instead, an open, flexible public space does better at engaging young minds.
'It can be used as a market in the morning, for festivals in afternoon and on a quiet (evening), just for sitting out and relating to people...It can be used for a school performance or some kind of local community festival.'
She thinks child-friendly environments make everybody's lives - especially older folk - easier. This is because they have 'very similar needs to children' - like being within walking distance to cafes, shops and libraries or other social nodes where they can interact with people as their social circle shrinks with age.
Yet, the quality of social life is all too often overlooked by city planners too engrossed with the hardware of their cities. 'Liveability' is regularly confused with 'standard of living', she says.
The latter refers to better health care, educational standards and a more comfortable environment that comes with higher incomes.
Meanwhile, liveability 'has more to do with quality of everyday social life, the interactions that we have every day and the quality of those interactions'.
In her view, a poor neighbourhood with abysmal sanitation could have a socially richer quality of life than a wealthier one with its plumbing systems in order.
'The trick is to try to figure out how to reclaim that rich social life and still keep our high standards of living,' she says.
Some cities get it right, although the one she cited might surprise - the seething tourist hot spot of Venice. Yet she notes that the 'museum city' actually hosts rich social networks supported by gracious infrastructure.
'While some people are richer, some poorer, they live side by side, everyone takes the same public transit and walks the same streets,' she says.
These social networks are based on Venetians' own home campo - the square they grew up in or live in - rather than their job or status.
The networks are strengthened by their shared memories of the city as well as the stories that collect around its landmarks.
'A community exists only when people know each others' stories. I would have to know all about you, where you grew up, what your childhood was like, who your parents were and who you played with in order for me to feel that I were part of your community or you were part of my community'.
Parents expand this community when they share memories of the city with their children. But the task becomes 'much harder' when the cityscape changes very fast - as it does in Singapore. The loss of a social landmark, like a long-reigning coffee shop, would then feel like a 'death in the family'.
She feels cities must have continuity in some measure: '(You need) social life that children take part in as they get to know their city.'
Ideally, a city should also have mixed-use environments, old and young from all walks of life working and playing in the same district. Such an integrated concept is regaining currency as urban planners realise the fallacy of zoning regulations that create buzzing business districts by day and dead zones by night.
In the United States, where middle-class families spent decades fleeing the cities for the suburbs, people are 'realising they have to bring the population back to the downtown area, and people are beginning to move back'.
'(People) want to be within walking distance of cafes and restaurants and nightlife and the resources of the city,' she says. 'This will be a trend for the future.'
The growing complaint in Singapore that only the well-off can afford to live within or close to the city as homes are so expensive gets a sympathetic response.
'That is not a good solution,' she declares, as it creates a rather skewed environment.
She thinks housing quotas for different income groups could help right the balance in the same way the Housing Board sets quotas for ethnic groups in each block and precinct.
In such an inclusive environment - where young and old, rich and poor, different ethnicities live together - people learn to 'negotiate with each other...and appreciate each others' values'. And it is these environments that will best meet the social needs of children - and ultimately, society.
'We need to live in as equitable an urban environment as possible,' she says. 'We need to live in a district where we all experience the diversity of our society as much as possible.'
PARIS - SINGAPORE is ranked first in the world for the lowest estimated rates of children under five who die each year for 2010, followed by Iceland, Sweden, Cyprus and Luxembourg.
In the United States - whose ranking has dropped from 20th to 42 since 1970 - the mortality rate is nearly double the European average. But the proportion of under-five children who die each year across the globe has dropped 60 per cent over the past four decades, according to a study published Monday.
In the last 20 years this salutary decline has accelerated, with the number of deaths among newborns, infants and one-to-four year olds falling from 11.9 million to an estimated 7.7 million in 2010, the new figures show.
That remains a staggeringly large number of young lives lost, many to preventable diseases and overwhelmingly in the world's poorest nations. A child born today in Chad, Mali or Nigeria is nearly sixty times less likely to see her or his fifth birthday than one born in Scandinavia. And progress still falls short of the trajectory needed to meet the UN's Millennium Development goal of slashing child deaths globally by 66 per cent between 1990 and 2015.
But the decline in under-five mortality is still an encouraging achievement, and suggests further progress is possible, the report says. Even at the current rate of improvement, there are 31 countries on pace to meet the UN benchmark for 2015, including Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia and Egypt.
All told, 54 of the 187 nations examined in the study are poised to reach the goal. In 1970 there were more than 200 under-five deaths for every 1,000 live births, the measure used to rank nations in this grim index. By 1990, that list had dwindled to 12, and today no country crosses the 200-death threshold, according to the study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet.
'One of the biggest achievements of the past 20 years has been this incredible progress in countries that historically have had the highest child mortality in the world,' said Christopher Murray, Director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and co-author of the study. --AFP
ST - A NATIONAL University of Singapore (NUS) study which ranked Singapore as the worst environmental offender among 179 countries has drawn a sharp response from the Government, but its authors are standing by it.
The study, jointly done by NUS and the University of Adelaide, found that Singapore's headlong rush into developing a modern megalopolis over the last 30 years had taken a terrible toll on its natural environment.
The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, however, has slammed the 16-page paper - which looks at relative environmental impact of countries - for not taking into account the 'unique circumstances of each country'.
Responding to queries from The Straits Times, a ministry spokesman said that the study was based on a proportional environmental impact index, which is defined only in terms of total land area.
'As such, countries with limited land size which have high intensity of land use would be necessarily disadvantaged in this proportional index,' said the spokesman.
'Correspondingly, the main indices which contributed to Singapore's poor ranking were contingent on total land area. For example, natural habitat conversion, which is the area of human-modified land divided by total land area, unfairly penalises Singapore's high urban density.'
In response, Professor Corey Bradshaw, 38, director of ecological modelling at the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and one of the paper's three authors, was adamant that the data spoke for itself.
'We didn't make it up,' he said. 'It's publicly available data so anyone can look at this.'
The study, which took about three years to complete, was published by peer-reviewed online science journal PLoS ONE.
Professor Navjot Sodhi, 48, from the NUS department of biological sciences and co-author of the paper, said Singapore's rapid development in the last 30 years has seen it lose 90 per cent of its forest, 67 per cent of its birds, about 40 per cent of its mammals and 5 per cent of its amphibians and reptiles.
The study is thought to be the first in the world to adopt a new rating system which looks only at environmental indicators such as forest loss, natural habitat conversion, marine captures, carbon emissions and biodiversity.
As the index focuses on modern environmental impact, it 'ignores some elements of historical degradation such as deforestation in Europe', the authors said in the paper. It therefore 'might penalise developing nations more heavily'.
Although a country like Brazil, for example, has chopped down more rain-forests, Singapore, proportional to its size, has wreaked greater destruction as nearly all its forests have made way for urbanisation, explained Prof Bradshaw.
He added: 'Singapore's development over the last 20 to 30 years has meant that it has done the worst damage to its environment.'
Developing and developed nations such as South Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and the Netherlands were also penalised by the proportional index.
While Singapore fared poorly in terms of proportional environmental impact, it is too small to figure in terms of global or absolute environmental impact. For that, the 10 worst countries are: Brazil, the United States, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia and Peru.
The authors conceded that Singapore was something of an anomaly as it is a city state, and a fairer comparison would be between it and other cities such as New York City and Hong Kong.
The negative rating is not the first Singapore has received in environmental studies.
The Republic has frequently been cited as having one of the highest per capita carbon emissions globally by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which provides energy statistics to the US government, factoring in data such as carbon emissions from bunker fuel, aviation and refining processes.
Latest EIA data taken in 2006 indicated that Singapore emitted 141 million tonnes of carbon emissions, ranking it as the 33rd-highest emitter of greenhouse gases among 215 countries.
Singapore - which adopts a measurement standard that does not include bunker fuel, aviation and refining emissions, which is in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines - puts its own carbon emissions figure as 40 million tonnes.
In this year's Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which ranks 163 countries on both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality, Singapore did better, coming in 28th with 69.6 points. Iceland fared the best with a score of 93.5 and Sierra Leone came in last with 32.1.
Speaking to leaders at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December last year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong defended Singapore's environmental record, saying it had taken environmental issues seriously since its independence more than 44 years ago.
He said Singapore had recently set a voluntary and domestically funded target to reduce emission growth by 16 per cent from business-as-usual levels by 2020, subject to a globally binding climate change deal.
He described this as 'a substantial commitment which will entail significant economic and social costs'.
SINGAPORE students spend 27 hours a week playing video games like Maple Story and World of Warcraft.
The statistic, uncovered by an ongoing National Institute of Education (NIE) study, is raising concern over the impact of such games, and the extent of gaming addiction here.
The three-year study, the biggest of its kind in Singapore, is looking at more than 3,000 primary and secondary school students' gaming habits, and will be finished at the end of the year.
NIE declined to reveal more about it pending an analysis of the results.
One thing is clear though: Singapore youth really like video games.
Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew, who revealed the 27-hour statistic at a Singapore Press Club event last month, said he was 'quite surprised and a little bit shocked' that the figure was so high.
THREE out of four of Singapore's tech-mad youngsters may be just a bit too fond of their electronic gadgets, suffering physically and socially as a result. 
