Online Game Addiction Among Turkish Adolescents: The Effect of Internet Parenting Style

Abstract

Parenting styles, which are known to have a significant impact on the development of adolescents, also play an important role in the use of the child's internet and accompanying technologies. One of these effects is the actions and behaviors of the adolescent in the technology-rich environments. In this context, the research was conducted to determine the effect of internet parenting style on online game addiction of adolescents. The study is a descriptive research and was designed as a correlational survey method. The sample group was formed by 1336 adolescents consisting of secondary and high school students. Research findings revealed that parents' internet styles were mostly considered as being laissez-faire and followed by authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parental styles respectively, and that 14.22% of adolescents had high levels of disruptions due to their online game habits and that the difference in gender context was in favor of men. Another finding of the study is that adolescents living in households with a high parental warmth, authoritative and authoritarian internet parenting style had lower levels of online game dependency than in other households with parents in other styles. While the differences between age of adolescents and education level of father and online game addiction were not found significant in the study, the differences between maternal education level, socio-economic level and playing time were turned up as significant.