Parenting Styles as Predictors of Smartphone Addiction among Children Aged 7-12 Years: An Empirical Study in Darbhanga District, Bihar

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19691773

Vijaysen Pandey and Mirza Ruhullah Baig (P G Department of Psychology, C M College Darbhanga, Bihar)

Smartphones are now an important part of kids’ daily lives because they are so common and easy to get. As kids spend more time on digital devices at a young age, people are worried about how much time they spend on their smartphones. In this case, the goal of the current study was to look at how different parenting styles affect how kids aged 7 to 12 in the Darbhanga district of Bihar become addicted to smartphones. To reach this goal, the study used a descriptive survey research design to look into how parents’ child-rearing habits affect how kids use smartphones. Using convenience sampling, we selected 400 school-age children from primary and upper primary schools. We got information about how the parents of the chosen children raised them. We used standardized tools to gather information on the study’s variables. We used the Parenting Style and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) developed by Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen and Hart (2001) to assess different parenting styles and the Smartphone Addiction ScaleShort Version (SAS-SV) developed by Kwon et al. (2013) to assess how addicted kids were to their phones. The examination of the gathered data indicated that authoritative parenting was the predominant parenting style among the sampled parents. The results also showed a strong negative link between authoritative parenting and children’s addiction to smartphones. This means that kids who grow up in families that are supportive, well-organized, and talk to each other are less likely to become overly dependent on their phones. On the other hand, authoritarian and permissive parenting styles were strongly linked to smartphone addiction. These results suggest that kids are more likely to use their smartphones too much if their parents are too strict with them or, on the other hand, if they don’t watch or control them enough.