Children's conduct and self-esteem

Abstract

The use of smartphones has become a potentially addictive practice. Parental smartphone addiction is likely to have far-reaching implications for children's conduct. This article investigates the intricacies and challenges of smartphone addiction, with a special emphasis on children behavior problems and their self-esteem. Moreover, the study investigated mean differences in study variables across demographic variables. This survey study was conducted on the sample of 500 parents (250 mothers& 250 fathers) of children with the age range of 6-13 years by using convenient sampling techniques from different schools located in Rawalpindi and Wah Cantt. Out of 500 parents, 300 parents (192mothers & 108 fathers) were identified as having problem of smartphone addiction by using the cutoff scores (31=males&33=females) on SAS-short version (Kwon, Kim, Cho & Yang, 2013).After this a sample of 300 children (Boys =152, Girls= 148) of identified group of parents were given a set of questionnaires (The Pediatric Symptom Checklist , Murphy et al. 1996, & Rosenberg self-esteem scale ,Rosenberg, 1965). The findings of study revealed the significant positive association between parental smartphone addictions with child behavioral problems. Furthermore, significant negative links between parental smartphone addiction with child self-esteem & child behavioral problems with child self-esteem.