Background The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between smartphone addiction of middle school students and smartphone usage types, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), stress, interpersonal problems, and parenting attitude. In particular, we wanted to find out how smartphone usage types predict smartphone addiction when controlling depression, ADHD, perceived stress, interpersonal problems, and parenting attitudes, which are the main predictors of existing smartphone addiction in this study. Methods The subjects of this study included 487 local middle school students (253 girls and 234 boys). The measurement instruments used were the smartphone addiction scale, patient health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Korean ADHD rating scales (K-ARS), perceived stress scale (PSS), Short form of the Korean-inventory of interpersonal problems circumplex scales (KIIP-SC), and the parenting attitude scale. We identified the relationships between the variables with correlation analysis and examined the predictors of smartphone addiction with hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Result The factors that influence smartphone addiction were sex (β = 3.14, P < 0.01), stress (β = 2.99, P < 0.01), and interpersonal problems (β = 3.81, P < 0.001). In addition, when the confounding variables of smartphone addiction were controlled to examine the effects of smartphone usage types on smartphone addiction, social network service (SNS) (β = 2.66, P < 0.01) and music/videos (β = 2.73, P < 0.01) were found to significantly positively affect smartphone addiction, whereas study (β = −2.54, P < 0.05) had a significantly negatively effect. And these factors explained 29.5% of the variance in smartphone addiction. Conclusion The order of the usage types with the highest influence on smartphone addiction was: enjoying music/videos, SNS, and study. This suggests that selective intervention depending on the main smartphone usage type can be effective.

Background: The purpose of this study was to test the relationships between academic burnout, mental health, parental achievement pressure, and academic demand in high school students. Methods: For these aims of this study, data were collected from 430 students (185 males, 245 females) in three Korean high schools. It was used Korean Academic Burnout Scale, Parental achievement pressure, academic demand, and Symptom Check List-47. The research method used t-test to find out the difference of each variable according to academic burnout, and the variables predicting academic burnout through hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Results: As a result of correlation analysis, academic burnout showed negative correlation with achievement, and high positive correlation with all variables of mental health and academic demand. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that academic burnout affects achievement, academic demand and depression in the subfactors of mental health. Conclusions: These findings suggest that interventional efforts are needed for these emotional factors.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between smartphone addiction of middle school students and smartphone usage types, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), stress, interpersonal problems, and parenting attitude. This study was also performed with the aim of verifying the relationships among depression, ADHD, perceived stress, interpersonal problems, and parenting attitude, which are predictors of smartphone addiction. The subjects of this study were 487 local middle school students (234 males and 253 females). The measurement instruments used were the smartphone addiction scale, depression scale (PHQ-9), ADHD scale (K-ARS), perceived stress scale (PSS), interpersonal problem scale (KIIP-SC), and the parenting attitude scale. This study identified the relationships between the variables with correlation analysis and examined the predictors of smartphone addiction with hierarchical multiple regression analysis. According to the study results, the factors that influenced smartphone addiction were gender, stress, and interpersonal problems. In addition, when the confounding variables of smartphone addiction were controlled to examine the effects of smartphone usage types on smartphone addiction, social media use and music/videos were found to have a positively significant effect on smartphone addiction while study had a negatively significant effect. The order of the usage types with the highest influence on smartphone addiction was enjoying music/videos, social media use, and study. This suggests that selective intervention depending on the main smartphone usage type can be effective.

Cyberbullying among children is increasing every year, leading to serious public health problems. Victims suffer serious aftereffects such as depression and suicidal ideation; therefore, early and appropriate psychological intervention and the role of schools are emphasized. This study investigated the effects of school sandplay group therapy (SSGT) on children affected by cyberbullying. This study was designed as a parallel-group non-randomized controlled trial. The study subjects were 139 elementary school students (mean age 11.35 years; standard deviation, 0.479; age range 12–13 years) residing in Cheonan City, Korea, who were assigned to the intervention and comparison groups. The intervention group received 10 sessions of therapy on a weekly basis, for 40 minutes per session. No therapy was administered in the control group. The effectiveness of the intervention was assessed using the Children Depression Inventory, Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire-Junior, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The assessment for the comparison group was performed concurrently with that of the intervention group. Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance. In this study, the SSGT group showed a significant decrease in depression and suicidal ideation compared to the control group after sandplay group therapy (SGT), and a significant increase in self-esteem. It was confirmed that SSGT can mitigate the negative consequences of cyberbullying and strengthen protective factors. This suggests that the SSGT can be successfully used for crisis counseling.