The relationship between mental health and smartphone over dependence among multicultural adolescents and general adolescents

Abstract

Purpose: Multicultural adolescents are increasing every year in Korea, and multicultural adolescents have many difficulties compared to general adolescents because their parents have different cultural backgrounds. In particular, adolescents are highly dependent on smartphones, which negatively affects their mental health. This study was to identify the correlation between stress awareness, depression experience, generalized anxiety disorder, and smartphone overdependence of multicultural adolescents and general adolescents. Method: Data from the 16th online survey of youth health behavior (2020) was used to analyze 39,987 adolescents. The data were analyzed using complex sample analysis by using SPSS/Win 22.0 Results: There was no significant difference in stress awareness, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and smartphone overdependence between multicultural and general adolescents. Multicultural adolescents showed significantly higher control failure of smartphone overdependence. The use time of smartphones on weekdays and weekends was significantly higher in multicultural youth. In both multicultural and general adolescents, smartphone overdependence was higher in the middle-level academic achievement and the higher the stress awareness and generalized anxiety disorder, the higher the possibility of smartphone overdependence. The smartphone overdependence of general youth was significantly related to gender, age, school level, residence type, and depression. Conclusion: To prevent adolescents€™ overdependence on smartphones, it needs to differentiate approaches according to the characteristics of multicultural and general adolescents.