Examination of cognitive representations of parents towards adolescent children with internet addiction and themselves as a parent

In this study, the personal structures that mothers use regarding their adolescent children with internet addiction and themselves as a parent were examined. This study was designed as a multiple quantitative case study. In the study, the Young Internet Addiction Short Form Scale (YİBKF) was applied to a large sample group in order to primarily identify students with internet addiction. In this direction, YİBKF was applied to a total of 444 students (312 female, 132 male) between the ages of 14 and 18, studying in eight schools in Yüreğir District of Adana Province. In the second step, 8 students with relatively high scores from this scale were determined and interviews were conducted with the mothers of these students. Thus, the data for the study were collected and made ready for analysis. These interviews were conducted with the repertory network technique, which is a semi-structured interview. The analysis of the data obtained from the participants was made with the Idiogrid 2.4 program. Analyzes were carried out to reveal the fictions of the mothers for themselves and their addicted children. Accordingly, the first finding was that these mothers were satisfied with themselves as mothers. These mothers positioned themselves very close to the images of "good example mother" and "ideal mother". On the other hand, cognitive representations of adolescent children were observed to be more negative. Mothers construct their children relatively negatively. Almost all of the mothers positioned their children as "ideal child" and "a child I admire around me" at a moderate level. These findings reveal that mothers see themselves in this role as positive, and their dependent children predominantly negatively. Keywords: Internet addiction, repertory network technique, ideal mother, cognitive representation, adolescent.