Relationships between Smartphone Addiction and Smartphone Usage Types, Depression, ADHD, Stress, Interpersonal Problems, and Parenting Attitude with Middle School Students.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between smartphone addiction of middle school students and smartphone usage types, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), stress, interpersonal problems, and parenting attitude. In particular, we wanted to find out how smartphone usage types predict smartphone addiction when controlling depression, ADHD, perceived stress, interpersonal problems, and parenting attitudes, which are the main predictors of existing smartphone addiction in this study. METHODS: The subjects of this study included 487 local middle school students (253 girls and 234 boys). The measurement instruments used were the smartphone addiction scale, patient health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Korean ADHD rating scales (K-ARS), perceived stress scale (PSS), Short form of the Korean-inventory of interpersonal problems circumplex scales (KIIP-SC), and the parenting attitude scale. We identified the relationships between the variables with correlation analysis and examined the predictors of smartphone addiction with hierarchical multiple regression analysis. RESULT: The factors that influence smartphone addiction were sex (ß = 3.14, P < 0.01), stress (ß = 2.99, P < 0.01), and interpersonal problems (ß = 3.81, P < 0.001). In addition, when the confounding variables of smartphone addiction were controlled to examine the effects of smartphone usage types on smartphone addiction, social network service (SNS) (ß = 2.66, P < 0.01) and music/videos (ß = 2.73, P < 0.01) were found to significantly positively affect smartphone addiction, whereas study (ß = -2.54, P < 0.05) had a significantly negatively effect. And these factors explained 29.5% of the variance in smartphone addiction. CONCLUSION: The order of the usage types with the highest influence on smartphone addiction was: enjoying music/videos, SNS, and study. This suggests that selective intervention depending on the main smartphone usage type can be effective.

Effects of school sandplay group therapy on children victims of cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying among children is increasing every year, leading to serious public health problems. Victims suffer serious aftereffects such as depression and suicidal ideation; therefore, early and appropriate psychological intervention and the role of schools are emphasized. This study investigated the effects of school sandplay group therapy (SSGT) on children affected by cyberbullying. This study was designed as a parallel-group non-randomized controlled trial. The study subjects were 139 elementary school students (mean age 11.35 years; standard deviation, 0.479; age range 12-13 years) residing in Cheonan City, Korea, who were assigned to the intervention and comparison groups. The intervention group received 10 sessions of therapy on a weekly basis, for 40 minutes per session. No therapy was administered in the control group. The effectiveness of the intervention was assessed using the Children Depression Inventory, Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire-Junior, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The assessment for the comparison group was performed concurrently with that of the intervention group. Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance. In this study, the SSGT group showed a significant decrease in depression and suicidal ideation compared to the control group after sandplay group therapy (SGT), and a significant increase in self-esteem. It was confirmed that SSGT can mitigate the negative consequences of cyberbullying and strengthen protective factors. This suggests that the SSGT can be successfully used for crisis counseling.