So in other words you believe parents and society act the way they do because they're so used to following orders that they cannot think for themselves? I agree...
I think it's just a (so far largely East) Asian response to technology. I say largely East Asian because we don't hear about this kind of stuff coming from, say, India or the Philippines or Malaysia. This is probably because they're not as so-called developed as the other countries.
Though I don't see it happen a lot in Singapore (which has a lot of technology, and a lot of people of East Asian origin.)
Still, I think the phenomenon is more prevalent in Japan than in other countries.