More than half of Taiwan's primary school students have been to Internet cafes and as many as 400,000 students go to such cafes at least once a week, according to a survey released yesterday.
According to the Survey on Generation E's Internet Cafe Experiences -- conducted by the ToSun Foundation (
Meanwhile, 120,000 of them go to Internet cafes more than three times per week and have been characterized as "addicts" by the survey.
Among these, 64 percent are male and 36 percent are female. The total amount they spend at Internet cafes is estimated to be as high as NT$79.6 billion per year.
This figure was based on an average spending of NT$45 per hour. Actual expenditure, however, may be higher as some Internet cafes charge NT$80 to NT$90 per hour on weekends and also on holidays.
The popularity of the cafes is generally attributed to the lack of availability of high-speed Internet connections at home, so many go to Internet cafes to play computer games which are best played over the faster local area networks available there.
However, the survey also pointed out that 7.7 percent of the teenagers have browsed pornographic Web sites at Internet cafes, and more than half of those have procured sexual services through the Internet services there.
There are currently more than 2,500 Internet cafes in operation. According to Wu Shou-shin (
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