Character amnesia is a phenomenon where experienced and native speakers of some East Asian languages, mostly Mandarin and Japanese, forget how to write Chinese characters previously well-known to them. The phenomenon is specifically tied to prolonged and extensive use of input methods, such as those that use romanizations of characters, and is documented to be a significant issue in China and Japan. Modern technologies, such as mobile phones and computers, allow users to enter Chinese characters using a phonetic transcription without knowing how to write them by hand. Whether or not the phenomenon is as widespread or troubling as some have claimed is the subject of debate.