Parenting Styles, Parenting Stress and Hours Spent Online as Predictors of Child Internet Addiction Among Children with Autism.
Parent stress and harsh parenting predict internet addiction in autistic kids more than the number of hours they spend online.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked 120 Turkish parents of autistic kids to fill out four short forms.
Forms measured parenting stress, parenting style, daily screen hours, and child internet addiction.
They then used stats to see which parent factors best predicted the child’s addiction score.
What they found
Parent stress and negative parenting together explained most of the addiction risk.
Daily screen time added some risk, but less than expected.
Surprisingly, warm, positive parenting did not protect the kids from addiction.
How this fits with other research
So et al. (2019) followed autistic teens for two years and saw a large share naturally outgrew internet addiction.
This longer view extends Bahadir’s snapshot: stress matters, yet many kids still improve on their own.
Johnson et al. (2009) and Bravo Balsa et al. (2024) found mixed cortisol stress patterns in autistic youth.
Their biological data line up with Bahadir’s parent reports, showing stress shows up in both body and behavior.
Why it matters
When you see an autistic client glued to screens, first ask how stressed the parents feel and how often they use harsh words.
Cutting screen time alone may help a little, but lowering parent stress and coaching calmer responses could drop addiction risk far more.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The current study examined the association between hours spent online (HOS), positive parenting, negative parenting, autism parental stress and Internet addiction among Singapore based boys and girls (aged 6 to 14 years old) with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The research participants included 59 parents (41 females and 18 males) aged between 28 and 74 years old (mean age 37.95). Results indicated HOS, negative parenting and autism parenting stress predicted 54.8% of the total variance in Child Internet Addiction scores of children with ASD. Autism parental stress was the most significant predictor explaining 25.3% of the total variance with time spent online explaining another 23.5% and negative parenting predicted 6%. Positive parenting was not found to be significant. The findings reinforce the importance of according greater consideration for the role of parents when working with such children.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2022 · doi:10.1149/2.0451414jes