I haven’t clicked on the link yet, but just reading the part you posted sounds brilliant to me. Just brilliant. I wish they had something like that when I went to high school. Hell I think if I had one now it would stress me out. geeze.
I don’t know if I like the “abstinence” angle, and this has the (tiny but real) potential to damage kids psychologically*, but overall I think it’s a great idea.
*What I mean by this: I read an article once where they interviewed some of the writers of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, who talked about real-life events inspiring some of the episodes. Apparently, the second-season ep “Bad Eggs” was inspired by the tamagotchi craze, and the odd effect it had on some children. Sometimes, kids became overly attached to their virtual pets, and heavily emotionally involved in their success (or failure to thrive). There was a case of two preteen girls who, after one accidentally broke her virtual pet, made a suicide pact and killed themselves. The interviewer spoke to a psychologist who mentioned a few isolated incidents of teenagers who took “virtual babies” and couldn’t give them up when their time with them was finished, or were traumatized by the severing of the relationship between them and their virtual baby. The reason the psychologist gave for this phenomenon sounded reasonable: kids mature emotionally at very different rates, and some are just not mentally capable of handling the strain of being responsible for another person. When they are forced into that situation, they may overcompensate by giving all of their emotional resources to their charges, not keeping any for themselves, until they can’t tell the difference between themselves and the person they are responsible for. I know this is very rare and not a cause for alarm, but it’s possible, and I think that before students are engaged in this kind of program, the schools that implement it should be aware of the possibility, because beyond what I read, I’ve never seen any other discussion of it. I’m going to look stuff up online to see if I can find cites, meanwhile. Maybe this is something we can discuss here in another forum.
The program the OP cites are actually condemned by some of the mainstream churches in my area (very conservative christian) because they might discourage girls from wanting to be mothers, or to have lots of children. The prevailing ethos here is “marry young, have lots of kids early”.
As for lola’s concern, I’d have to say this as a health professional: IMHO, those individuals very likely had pre-existing psychological problems which would have appeared somewhere else in their lives, and possibly in worse forms, had they not had the tamagochi experience.
Personally I believe the experience described by Astro’s OP is a positive one that succeeds in dissuading a lot of girls from having their first baby quite so soon.
Sadly, good studies which prove this effect seem to be lacking.
I agree 100%. I have also heard theories that eating disorders can be expressed in people with similar personalities: perfectionist, eager to please, issues around handling responsibility.
I had to take care of one of these for 10th/11th grade health class. I remember thinking that it would make more sense to give them to the 8th and 9th graders instead of giving them to the 16 and 17 year olds.
We did them at the school I used to teach at. The nice thing was that , though it took two turns, all the kids - including the boys - were responsible for one at some point. And it wasn’t for a day or two either. They had to carry them around all school day, at home, over the weekend. One boy did manage to flunk when he got so sick of his robot baby crying (and it’s a terrible crying sound, very rough on the nerves), he set it out on the back porch and forgot about it.
Sigh
Whatever happened to the good ol’ days when the gym teacher gave you an egg and you took care of that? That built character, and imagination to boot.
But the most impotant point is, does the doll make dirty diapers? Do they smell?
kiddoeaddi had to take one home back when she was in the 8th grade. I thought it was idiotic, for the most part. The kids treated it like the novelty it was. It also had an unintended effect, too. She liked taking care of the damn thing. Thanks a lot, _______ Middle School. 
She didn’t win the Mother of the Year award, though. She lost points for “abuse” when some boy grabbed it from her and drop kicked it down the hall.
My daughter had one of these for her Child Development class when she was a sophomore. It was optional, but the kids who didn’t take the baby home had another assignment to do. She was all excited because she got to keep the baby over a three day weekend. By the end of the weekend she was exhausted. The stupid thing cried at random times, like babies do, but it was completely random. I had to tell her that if it were a real baby she would eventually have been able to feed it before she went out with it, and probably it would have been able to stand a messy diaper for the five minutes it took to drive home. So it was educational, but not as realistic as I could have wished.
It did get a little scary, though, watching her and her boyfriend take care of the thing. Made me think they were enjoying it just a little too much. 
The ones our school has are called “Baby Think It Over”. Totally subtle.
I’ll wait for Japan to build a model for retail sales. They can sell it as Kid Tomodachi and charge $100. Every kid will want one and then they can learn babies cost money too. 
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