Factors Affecting Help-Seeking for Problematic Smartphone Use Among Adolescents in Korea

Background and Purpose:Problematic Internet use/Internet addiction has become a public health concern. It has been well known that family (e.g. parental mediation) and community level (e.g. preventive education) efforts could alleviate possible harms from Internet use. However, little research exists regarding problematic use of smartphone. Internet use through smartphone could be more problematic among adolescents because they can easily avoid supervision from family and school. This study examines factors affecting problematic use of smartphone and help-seeking for smartphone use problems among Korean adolescents based on parental mediation theory and help-seeking framework of Deane et al. (2005).

Methods: Using a sample of 5,967 adolescents age of 10 to 19 (male=53.1%), the cross-sectional data were studied from the Internet Addiction Survey (2014), conducted by National Information Agency and Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning in Korea. Parental mediation and parental relationship were assessed with standardized scales. Experience of preventive education and intention to utilize mental health services were assessed with binomial items. Awareness for smartphone/Internet addiction was assessed with an item with four-point Likert scale. Problematic smartphone use was assessed with Smartphone Addiction Scale. As primary analysis, Structural Equation Modeling was employed to explore preventive and mediating factors. The final model was accepted after model respecification. Mplus7.4 was used for analyses with WLSMV estimator.

Results: 88% of the participants have been using smartphone and 24.8% of them were vulnerable to problematic smartphone use. 36.2% of the participants showed help-seeking intention. Model fit of the hypothesis model was good (chi-squared=222.965, df=68, p<.001, RMSEA=.020, CFI=.986, TLI=.976). Model respecification did not worsen the model fit (Δchi-squared=3.284, Δdf=3, p=.350) and model fit of the alternative model was good (RMSEA=.018, CFI=.988, TLI=.980). Parental relationship was positively associated with awareness (β=.038, p<.01), parental mediation (β=.404, p<.001), and negatively associated with problematic smartphone use (β=-.092, p<.001). Preventive education was positively associated with awareness (β=.097, p<.001) and intention to use mental health service (β=.133, p<.001). Awareness was positively associated with problematic smartphone use (β=.038, p<.05) and intention for help-seeking (β=.192, p<.001). Parental mediation was negatively associated with problematic smartphone use (β=-.086, p<.001) and positively associated with intention for help-seeking (β=-.102, p<.001). Finally, problematic smartphone use was negatively associated with intention for mental health service (β=-.048, p<.05).

Conclusions and Implications: Preventive education provided by school and community increase the awareness for possible harms from Internet and smartphone use and the intention for mental health service utilization. But, it was not effective to prevent problematic use of smartphone. The behavioral problems related to smartphone use may be hard to prevent only by personal efforts or preventive education. Adolescents with higher risk were reluctant to utilize mental health service compared to less risky adolescents. Parental involvement increased the awareness as soon as it was a preventive factor for problematic smartphone use. In sum, family level involvement has more direct effect to prevent problems from smartphone use compared to community level services. It is suggested to develop effective preventive education methods from community.