The Digital World for Children and its Relationship with Personality Disorders: Exploring Emerging Technologies

Abstract

Nowadays, children live in the world of modern technologies, which have be-come an integral part of our daily life. Therefore, it is very important to study the influence of the digital world on the child, especially on his personality de-velopment. The impact of the digital world on personality disorder is not enough studied in the UAE and is relevant. The cause of personality disorder in an adult can be mental health problems as a child, namely, emotional instability, excessive fear and anxiety, behavioral problems. The purpose of our research is to evaluate the relationship between the dependence of children on the Internet and the mental health of a child. The study involved 463 students from public and private schools in Dubai aged from 8 to 16 years. Internet Addiction Test, IAT, C. Young (Kimberley S. Young, 1996) was used to determine the level of Internet addiction The Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, 2015) was used to determine the degree of psychological health of a child. Pearson’s correlation analysis showed that there is a positive correlation between the level of Internet addiction and the child’s psychological health, the Pearson correla-tion coefficient is 0.63. The category of internet-addict has the highest rates on the criteria: emotional symptoms (61%), peer relationship problems (73%), hy-peractivity (33%), behavioral problems (43%). High rates of these criteria indi-cate that Internet-dependent children are characterized by aggressiveness, in-creased anxiety, depression, indifference to others, irresponsibility. In addition, they have problems with communication, excessive impulsiveness, lack of de-sire to help others. This result indicates the presence of the negative impact of excessive use of the Internet on the psychological health of the child, which can cause personality disorder.