The purpose of this study was to analyze the parental child-rearing attitude perceived by elementary school students and their school life satisfaction on their internet addiction. In order to do so, the study selected a total of 777 students from the...
The purpose of this study was to analyze the parental child-rearing attitude perceived by elementary school students and their school life satisfaction on their internet addiction. In order to do so, the study selected a total of 777 students from the 4th-, 5th- and 6th-graders in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, Daejeon and Busan and conducted a survey.
In order to sort out the groups of internet addition, the study used the Internet Addiction Proneness Scale-Short Form developed by National Information Society Agency (NIA). For the measurement of parental child-rearing attitude, it used the Parents' Child-rearing Attitude scale perceived by the adolescents developed by Myo-yeon Huh(1999). With regard to school life satisfaction, it used the school life satisfaction scale developed by Yoon-jung Kang(2006). Collected data were analyzed by SPSS 18.0program depending on their purpose.
The results of this study were summarized as below.
First, internet addiction, parental child-rearing attitude and students' school life satisfaction showed significant negative correlations in total scores. The more negative child-rearing attitude the parents had the higher level of internet addiction their children had. In addition, the lower school life satisfaction the children had the higher level of internet addiction they had.
Second, it has been found that parental child-rearing attitude had more correlations with children's internet addiction than with their school life satisfaction.
Third, there were significant differences in parental child-rearing attitude and children's school life satisfaction between the elementary school students having internet addiction and those without internet addiction. The addicted elementary school students perceived their parental child-rearing attitude negatively than the non-addicted counterparts and had a lower level of school life satisfaction.
Fourth, it has been noted that fathers' excessive expectations and abusive child-rearing attitude affected the internet addiction of their children. The survey showed that the more excessively the fathers expected from their children the higher level of internet addiction the children had. In addition, it demonstrated that the more abusive child-rearing attitude the fathers had the lower level of internet addiction their children had. On the other hand, mothers' monitoring and affection functioned as one of the biggest factors in explaining the internet addition of their children. The more monitoring and affectionate child-rearing methods the mothers showed the lower level of internet addiction their children had. There were no factors that significantly affected students' school life satisfaction.
This implied that children's internet addiction was affected more by the parental child-rearing attitude than by their school life satisfaction and the variables related to the parents were more important to elementary school students. Based on the results, the study provided some suggestions for discussions and future research.