A Survey Of Mothers About The Challenges They Face And The Actions They Take To Reduce Their Children's Mobile Phone Usage. A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Background: Mobile addiction among children is a growing concern, and it's easy to point fingers at parents for not setting strict rules or for allowing too much screen time. Not all parents willingly allow their children to use mobile phones excessively—many are genuinely concerned about their child’s health and well-being. However, we often overlook the daily challenges parents face in trying to control or limit mobile usage. Their efforts are frequently underestimated or misunderstood. This qualitative study investigated mother’s concerns about their child mobile use, challenges they are facing to stop that. We tried to explore what their kids watch in mobile, average length of engage in mobile, when kids need mobile, worry of mothers, opinion of mothers in regard to cause of mobile addiction in children, what challenges do you face in trying to reduce or stop your children's mobile addiction and finally how they are trying to stop mobile addiction. 

Methods: Individual interviews were held with 120 mothers residing in Khed Taluka, District Ratnagiri, Konkan region, Maharashtra, India and they had children aged 6 to 10 Years. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, then inductive analysis and interpretation by the research team distilled the key ideas and illustrative quotes.

Results: Participant demographics are presented in Table 1. Participants were predominantly were in age group between 36-45 (43%). Majority 38% of children were aged 10 years.  Out of 120 families 90 % families had multiple homes in their home and all those are smart phones.  All families had television in addition to this 19% had Laptop/Desktop and 21 (12%) has tablet available in home. In duration of mobile phone usage per day in hours 50 % use 1-2 hours uses mobile. Maximum children that is 50% use mobile phones for games.

Overall, children mobile use has become significant issue to the parents and really parents are worried on how to avoid it and implementing their own strategies to combat this problem. To avoid mobile use majority parents obstacles are their own family members like in some families husband, in some other families grandmother and grandfather, father and mother in law are problems. Mothers shared what their children watch commonly in mobile, length of engage in mobile, commonly when their kids ask mobile, what are really worries about their children future, other than what else they use other than mobile, what are the major causes of mobile addiction, what are the challenges of mobile use, how to avoid it, and what abnormal findings they have found in their child

Conclusion:

Mothers are often doing their best to fight against their children's mobile addiction, constantly trying different strategies and approaches to manage the issue. However, this is not a battle she can win alone—addressing mobile addiction requires the support and involvement of the entire family.