Examination of gifted students’ Internet / game addiction and school social behaviors

Abstract

Internet and games can have some adverse effects if used unconsciously. Especially for gifted students, internet and games can be risky and result in addiction due to their cognitive and social characteristics. Since the game and internet addiction conduce to social problems as well. In this vein, the purpose of the study is to examine the internet and game addiction levels of gifted students and their school social behaviors in terms of gender and age variables. In addition, the relationship between computer addiction scale scores and school social behavior scale scores are also examined within the scope of the study. Descriptive correlational survey method is used in the study.The sample is comprised of 157 gifted students and 16 teachers of them. Convenient sampling was used in the study.In conclusion, internet and game addiction scores of the gifted boys in the study were higher than those of girls. On the other hand, in terms of school social behaviors, the findings showed that gifted girls achieved higher scores than boys. Additionally, it is also observed that gifted children aged 10 and over got higher scores from internet and game addiction while the School social behavior did not show a significant difference according to the age variable. As the internet and game addiction scores of the gifted children increased, their school social competence, weakened. On the other hand, it was seen that the increase in the gifted children's internet / game addiction led to an increase in their antisocial behaviors.

Problematic Media Use among Children up to the Age of 10: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In terms of gender-related differences, most of the reviewed studies revealed that boys were more likely to manifest PMU than girls [60,61,[63][64][65]67,70,71,79,85,86,88,89,91,93,94], and that this trend was reversed in junior high school, whereby PMU became higher in girls [63]. Likely, males and females are involved in different web-mediated activities for different gender-specific motivations depending on the developmental stage they are going through.…”

“…Studies have observed that PMU increased significantly with higher age and school grade [63,69,71,73,89,93,94]. Therefore, preschool children had lower PMU levels than primary school children [89], while the latter had lower PMU levels than junior high school children [63].…”

“…Regarding the role of age, studies confirmed that children's PMU significantly increased with higher age and school grade, and from year to year [63,69,71,73,89,93,94]. Particularly, parents of 3-5-year-old children perceived lower levels of PMU than parents of 6-9-year-old children [89].…”

“…Concerning the gender differences, findings revealed that boys more likely showed PMU than girls [60,61,[63][64][65]67,70,71,79,85,86,88,89,91,93,94]. Interestingly, Takahashi et al [63] showed that gender differences in the prevalence of PMU were related to school grades.…”