Research Scholar, Department of Early Childhood Education, Kyungnam University, Changwon, 51767, Republic of Korea
*Corresponding Author: Byung-Man Kim Research Scholar, Department of Early Childhood Education, Kyungnam University, Changwon, 51767, Republic of Korea Phone: +82-055-249-6427, E-mail: bmkim@kyungnam.ac.kr
Online published on 27 February, 2018.
The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between early childhood teachers’ internet and Smartphone addiction tendency and their happiness among the media addiction variables and the effects of these media addiction tendency to their mental health.
The subjects in this study were 500 randomly selected early childhood education teachers at a kindergarten and daycare center located in the city of Busan. The instruments used in this study were the National Information Society Agency by National Information Society Agency's Internet Addiction Proneness Scale for Adults-Short Form(KS-A), Smartphone Addiction Proneness Scale of early childhood education teachers. The instrument used to assess the happiness of the early childhood education teachers was Kwon's Happiness Scale that was an adapted version of Argyle's21 Happiness Scale which consisted of three areas: external happiness, internal happiness and self-regulatory happiness
The results of this study are as follows: First, the early childhood education teachers took an aboveaverage positive view of their own happiness, media addiction(internet addiction, smartphone addiction). Second, significant positive correlations among the internet addiction and smartphone addiction of the early childhood education teachers. Meanwhile there were significant negative correlations among their own happiness and media addiction(internet addiction, smartphone addiction). Third, media addiction(internet addiction, smartphone addiction) could be regarded as the variables to affect their happiness, and smartphone addiction was more influential, followed by internet addiction. Fourth, smartphone addiction has mediation effect in the relations between internet addiction and happiness of early childhood education teachers. The findings of the study suggest that in order to boost the happiness of early childhood education teachers, it's necessary to decrease their media addiction(internet addiction, smartphone addiction).
This study suggests the possibility and direction for early childhood teacher education to prevent media addiction and tries to provide basic data to help early childhood teacher's happiness by using digital media represented by internet and smartphone in positive manner.
Media addiction, internet addiction, smartphone addiction, happiness, early childhood education teachers
