The purpose of this study was to investigate the overall trend for sex difference in terms of the proportion of children's Internet addiction, to analyze the distinction among the related facts classified by groups, and to explore the relative effects...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the overall trend for sex difference in terms of the proportion of children's Internet addiction, to analyze the distinction among the related facts classified by groups, and to explore the relative effects of self-control, self-efficacy, and parents' negative rearing attitude on Internet addiction.
The research subjects were 713 children who were selected from 5th and 6th grades of elementary schools in Pusan Korea. To analyze the data, statistical methods such as frequency, cronbach's, α, Χ^(2)(Chi-square) test, t-test, pearson correlation coefficients and multiple regression were used. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS 10.0 program.
The major findings of this study were as follows;
1. The average proportion of children's Internet addiction is 23.64, the Internet addiction group is 13.2%(94 persons), and the Internet non addiction group is 44.6%(318 persons). Boys had a significantly higher degree of Internet addition than girls.
2. The children's Internet addiction group mainly used the Internet for the purpose of playing games or chatting. Furthermore, the group showed that the number of meetings with friends in real life and having time alone increased but the time spent conversing with family and doing assignments or studying decreased. Also, there is a high rate of self-efficacy, self-control, and good grades in the Internet non addiction group; and parents' negative rearing attitude, the time for using Internet, and children's own perception about addiction are more prevalent in the Internet addiction group.
3. The tendency of Internet addiction is high in cases when children dedicate a great deal of time to the use of the Internet, parent's negative rearing attitude is high, and the self-efficacy, self-control, or the standard of living is low.