Psychosocial Development of Children Addicted Versus Not Addicted to Smartphones

Abstract

Psychosocial development of preschool children is the process of children’s abilities developing and children starting to take the initiative to solve their own problems according to their knowledge. However, many preschool children are currently addicted to gadgets such as smartphones, which can interfere with their taking initiative and paying attention to the social environment. The aim of this study was to determine the differences in psychosocial development between children who are addicted vs. those who are not addicted to smartphones in preschool age children. This study was a descriptive comparative study and it used a simple random sampling technique to select the respondents. The Mann-Whitney test was employed to analyze the data with a significance degree of 0.05 (5%). The results showed that there was a significant difference between addicted and non-addicted children. In the non-addicted group of children, the median value was 2.00 (1.61-1.78) and in the addicted group of children the median value obtained was 1.00 (1.03-1.11). The average ranking for the non-addicted group was 52.50 and was 28.50 for the addicted group. It is recommended that parents understand the impact of using gadgets such as smartphones on children’s psychosocial development, and that parents pay more attention to each phase of children’s development, especially psychosocial development at preschool age. Keywords: gadget addiction, preschool children, psychosocial development