ABSTRACT. Today's generations of adolescents have grown up with information and communication technologies which have a significant place in their lives. One of the important issues in this context is the relation between the Internet and the mental health of adolescents. The first topic that this paper deals with, is the relationship between the use of the Internet and mental health, and the other is related to the planned use of the Internet for the purpose of improving wellbeing. The most common activity of young people on the Internet is social networking. Online social networks can positively affect wellbeing through facilitating self-disclosing and the availability of social support. Such findings from empirical research support the ideas of theories that emphasize the positive aspects of online relating. However, social networks (and online communication in general) can also have significant negative effects on the mental health of adolescents, if they are exposed to cyberbullying. The second topic of the paper is the planned use of the Internet for the purpose of improving mental health. To young people (and to members of other age groups, as well) online support groups are the most accessible nowadays, aimed at supporting a group of people with a common problem or life challenge. These forums are most often text-based and this kind of communication has a number of potential benefits for users. It is also possible to organize online interventions that 1
The findings of the research into the perceived parental behavior provide contrasting data as to the existence and the nature of differences in the perception of parental behavior based on parents’ gender and respondents’ gender. The purpose of the present study is to examine the differences in the perceived parental behavior in adolescents with regard to parents’ gender and respondents’ age and gender. The study included 466 respondents (262 girls and 204 boys), in middle to late adolescence, divided into four sub-groups according to their age. The respondents were asked to fill in the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) questionnaire which measures the care and overprotection in mothers and fathers respectively. The obtained findings show the existence of significant difference based on the parents’ gender for both subscales: both maternal care and maternal overprotection were estimated as higher. Observing the differences by respondents’ gender on the whole sample, only one significant difference is found: paternal overprotection was estimated as higher by girls. The differences by age as observed within gender groups are completely disparate for girl and boy groups. The best insight into the differences is obtained through analysis by gender, for groups relatively homogenous in terms of their age (for the first three groups the only significant difference appears in the paternal overprotection subscale; the difference disappears in the subgroup of the oldest respondents’, while the differences between the perception of maternal and paternal care are of significance here). One particularly important finding for future research into rearing behavior is the fact that the perception of parental behavior changes over the period of adolescence differently for boys and girls; therefore, the analysis including perceived parental behavior should be performed for subgroups by gender, which are as homogenous as possible in terms of their age
The basic aim of this research was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Index of Problematic Online Experiences (I-POE) on a sample of adolescents from Serbia. Construct validity, which had previously been tested by the authors of the test themselves (Mitchell, Jones, Wells, 2013), was retested here. The possibility of predicting I-POE scores based on selected personality traits and parental mediation was also evaluated. A total of 339 students from two cities in Serbia, aged 18 and 19, participated in the study. The results indicated that very similar behavior determined problematic Internet use (PIU) both in this research and that of the authors of the test. Construct validity testing indicated that the scores on the I-POE predicted online perpetration, sexual behavior and victimization, as expected. Negative valence was correlated with the I-POE scores with mediation effect of Parental involvement. The results indicate that I-POE encompasses significant characteristics of PIU as a global phenomenon and it can be of significant importance in assessing this problem among the adolescent population.
The research deals with a problem that has remained open despite significant efforts on the part of researchers - does frequent use of smart phones disrupt the interpersonal relationships and subjective well-being of the users? Hypotheses on the moderating effects that smart phone (SP) use can have on the relationship between dimensions pertaining to attachment to friends and dimensions pertaining to subjective well-being among high school students were tested. The research included 556 Serbian adolescents, all of whom were of age. The following measuring instruments were used: Smartphone use frequency (SUF); Inventory of Parents and Peer Attachment-Revised (IPPA-R) - subscales for friends; in particular, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were used to measure subjective well-being. The basic research results indicate that the frequency of smart phone use is a moderator in the relationship between Trust in friends and Communication with friends, and Satisfaction with life and Positive affect: the connection between Trust and Communication, and the dimensions of subjective well-being is most pronounced for those adolescents who, compared to their peers, use smart phones the least, while the connection is the weakest, or cannot be determined, among those adolescents who most frequently use a smart phone. An important limit in the frequency of SP use is the transition from low or moderate to excessive use - in the case of the highest level of frequency of SP use the positive connection between attachment to friends and subjective well-being is lost.
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