EFFECT OF PARENTING STYLES AND PERSONALITY TRAITS ON INTERNET ADDICTION AMONG ADOLESCENTS

Abstract

Internet has become the most widespread and versatile technology in the world. People of all ages rely on the Internet to satisfy their different needs such as learning, entertaining, socializing, banking and shopping. With the advancement in the technology, the usage, speed, interactivity, and access to internet over the past decade have a tremendous increase. With this tremendous increase in the internet usage, the one specific age group that seem to be more prone towards developing a problem with the internet are the adolescents. The elevated usage of the internet by this age group may have exposed them to an unprecedented risk of Internet addiction which has harmful psychological and behavioral effects on the user. The concept of Internet addiction was first coined by Goldberg (1996) as “a pathology, a disorder, an overuse of this technology, including a wide range of behaviours and impulse-control”. This study aimed to synthesize previous findings by investigating the effect of parenting styles and personality traits on Internet addiction among adolescents of urban Ghaziabad. A sample of 300 adolescents of urban Ghaziabad was collected wherein, 150 adolescents suffered from Internet addiction and 150 were Non-addicted. The sample included both male and female participants. The participants filled out three self-report questionnaires including the Internet Addiction Test (Young, 1998), the Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) and the Big Five Inventory (John, 1991). The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics – Mean, Standard of Deviation (SD) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). As per the results of the study, we observed that the 5 hypotheses of the study were accepted while 3 hypotheses were rejected. Results indicated significant difference among the means of the two groups (Internet addicted and Non-addicted) in three the dimensions of personality – Extraversion, Neuroticism and Conscientiousness. Similarly, significant difference among the means of the two parenting styles – Permissive and Authoritarian was found in both the groups (Internet addicted and Non-addicted). No significant difference was found among the means of Openness and Agreeableness personality traits with respect to the two groups Internet addicted and Non-addicted. Also, no significant difference was found with respect to Authoritative parenting style among both the groups Internet Addicted and Non Addicted.