Relationship between parenting styles and problematic Internet use

Background: The widespread use of the Internet and ICTs has also led to concerns about the consequences of excessive use. Problematic internet use (PIU) refers to an inability to control internet use resulting in psychological and social difficulties and affecting personal life, studies, or work (Spada, 2014; Zhou, et al., 2017). In this context, it is valuable to identify factors that may be associated with such problematic use, from which prevention guidelines can emanate. In this sense, the family and, more specifically, parenting styles, can play a determining role, as permissive or negligent style (Chou & Lee, 2017), lack of affection and involvement, rejection or lack of communication and support (Huang et al., 2019).  They have not been studied among people with disability.

The objectives of this work are to study the relationship between parental educational styles and PIU in university students with disabilities, and to analyze which elements of the parenting style may act as risk/protective factors with respect to PIU.

Methods: For this purpose, a total of 603 university students with disabilities between 18 and 77 years of age were selected, with a mean age of 42.88 and SD= 14.56, of whom 42.3% were men, 56.4% were women and 1.3% chose the "other" gender option. All of them completed online the Clinical Personality Questionnaire for Adolescents and Adults (TAMADUL), developed and validated by Hernández & Hernández (2013), whose parental educational styles scale evaluates various facets of these styles. They also completed the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), designed by Young, (1998), in its reduced 12-item version validated with university students with disabilities by Pino et al, (2023).

Results: Participants with PIU were compared with those with normal use (score higher and lower respectively of 24 on the IAT, according to the authors). ANOVA indicated significant differences in all variables related to the parenting style of both father and mother, who always presented more adapted scores in the normal internet use group. The effect sizes were moderate for the variables “Capricious permissiveness” of both father and mother and for “father's protectionism”. For the rest of the variables the effect size was slight. Subsequently, in the multiple regression analysis, an R-squared model of 0.184 was obtained, with the variables “Family dissatisfaction”, “Protectionism” of the father and mother, “Liberal permissiveness” of the mother and “Capricious permissiveness” of the father as risk factors for PIU.

Conclusions: The main conclusion of this study is the need for an approach to PIU from different spheres, incorporating the variables of family educational style, since they have shown their role as risk factors. Guidelines can be obtained from this study to help guide families in facing the challenge of education for new technologies.