Comparison of smartphone addiction levels, temperament characteristics and parental attitudes of adolescents with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

This study was aimed to compare adolescents between 11-14 years with and without Attention Deficit Hyperacitivity Disorder in terms of smartphone addiction, temperament characteristics and parental attitudes and to reveal differences between groups. For this purpose, a total of 143 children and their parents were included in the study, 67 of which were adolescents who had received ADHD diagnosis and 76 had not received ADHD diagnosis. While parents completed the Parental Attitude Research Instrument-PARI, adolescents were administered the Smart Phone Addiction Scale - Short Form and Junior Temperament and Character Inventory and and both groups were given personal information form. Student's t-test, Chi-squared analysis, correlation analysis, ANOVA and MANOVA were used to analyze the findings obtained from the research. Then, in order to investigate the predictors of smartphone addiction, two different multiple regression analyzes were performed for the groups with and without ADHD. According to the analysis, the smartphone addiction scores of adolescents with ADHD were significantly higher than the non-ADHD group. In addition, ADHD and non-ADHD groups showed differences in temperament characteristics and parental attitudes. Finally, it was determined that both groups differed in terms of purpose of using smartphones and gender. Regression analysis revealed that, novelty seeking temperament trait positively predict and overprotection parental attitude negatively predict smartphone dependence in ADHD group. In the non-ADHD group, smartphone addiction predicted novelty seeking temperament trait positively and persistence temperament trait predicted negatively. The findings were discussed within the context of the literature and some suggestions were made for further studies.