Longitudinal Analysis of Influencing Factors of Problematic Smartphone Use in Preteens

Abstract

Background: In the socially distanced era triggered by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, there has been a surge in online activities across children’s and adolescents’ lives. Increased smartphone use by children and adolescents places them at higher risk of overdependence. Methods: The purpose of this study, using secondary data from the 10th to 11th wave of the Panel Study on Korean Children, was to longitudinally investigate problematic smartphone use in preteens and to comprehensively understand the effects of variability and diversity in preteen development on excessive smartphone use. STATA/BE 17 was used to analyze the panel logit model. Among the 1,286 participants aged 9–10 from the Panel Study on Korean Children, 342 with complete responses (from the parent, child, and school teacher) were selected as the subjects of this study. Results: The size of the risk group for preteens’ problematic smartphone use showed a trend of increasing from 126 in 2017 to 149 in 2018. Factors influencing smartphone overdependence included the authoritative parenting behavior, permissive parenting behavior, child’s externalizing problems, peer communication, and parental supervision. Factors related to parents and peers, as well as their own characteristics, had a complex effect on preteens’ problematic smartphone use. Conclusions: To reduce preteens’ smartphone overuse, it is necessary to avoid permissive parenting behaviors and to increase parental monitoring of this population. Interventions should be conducted that focus on reinforcing parenting behaviors that respect preteen’s opinions and set rules together, and strengthen preteen’s communication with their peers.

The Influence of Smartphone Use on Tweens’ Capacity for Complex Critical Thinking

“…At the cognitive level, there is a shift from concrete to abstract thinking, although, generally, higher executive abilities are not yet fully developed [ 47 ]. This is the period of life in which you usually get the first smartphone at an average age of 10 years, and in which you reach the peak of greatest use [ 48 ]. Recent studies have shown that tweens interact with their smartphones constantly, with 88% of them checking their phones at least once an hour [ 49 , 50 ].…”