Current Pediatric Research

Introduction: Children spend most of their time playing games. Olden days they were playing with toys and friends but now they just use mobile for play and that only has become their friend. Child enthusiasm towards it is more than any other age group. Mobile phones have become the integral part of child’s life. The attraction towards mobile phone has created several physical, psychological and social changes in children and parents are concerned about the increased usage. Children will use mobile phones so excessively that it tends to change their behaviour. So this study was carried out to know the parents perception about behavioural changes of their children due to the usage of mobile phone

Methods: The present descriptive survey was conducted among parents working in Yenepoya deemed to be university campus including 110 parents of children aged between 6-12 years who were selected through non-probability purposive sampling technique method. The samples were administered with self-structured questionnaire regarding perceived behavioural changes after checking the validity and reliability (r=0.8) of the tool. The collected data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results: It was observed that 41.8% of parents perceived difficulty in calming down the child when child is aggressive. 36.4% parents perceived that children get distracted frequently. 36.4% of parents agreed that child becomes very sensitive for simple matters, 34.5% of parents agreed for child showing less interest in eating food. In behaviour score category which ranges from 1-80, 50.9% of children’s falls in category of 21-40 grade of behaviour score, 45.4% between 41-60 grades of behaviour score, which depict that they are in the risk of getting addiction to mobile phone. In this study the association between behavioural score and selected demographic variable, indicates there is no significant association between demographic variable and behaviour change of the children at p<0.05 level of significance.

Conclusion: The study revealed that most of the parents have perceived behaviour changes in children. Most of the parents agreed that it effects on child’s food eating patterns, frequently getting distracted, difficulty in calming down when they are in aggressive mood, their sensitivity for simple matters, and they like to stay at home rather than spending time with friends. All the findings affect the growth and development of the child.

Author(s): Sara Devamani S, Hymi Paul, Josmi George, Sameera Begum, Sharin Neetal Dsouza, Melba Roshini Lobo*

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