Interrelationship of Preschoolers' Gross Motor Skills, Digital Game Addiction Tendency, and Parents' Parenting Styles

Abstract

Background: Motor performance in childhood predicts physical fitness, cognitive capacity, socio-emotional development, and academic success. Parenting styles are especially important to such performance in the preschool period, as children's gross motor abilities are shaped in part by their interactions with parents. Young children's physical activity is also declining as they spend more time on screens. Methods: This quantitative survey-based study examined the relationships among 252 preschoolers' gross motor skills, their tendency to become addicted to digital games, and their parents' parenting styles. Results: The sampled preschoolers' gross motor skill development and game addiction tendencies were both low, while the participating parents reported high levels of democratic and overprotective parenting attitudes, low levels of authoritarian ones, and moderate levels of permissive ones. Motor skills were not associated with children's addiction tendency or parents' democratic (also known as authoritative), authoritarian, or permissive styles. However, overprotective parenting was positively and significantly associated with gross motor skill scores. While no significant relationship was found between children's digital game addiction tendencies and their parents' adoption of a democratic parenting style, such tendencies were positively and statistically correlated with the authoritarian and permissive parenting styles. One dimension of such tendencies, constant gameplay, was also positively and significantly correlated with overprotective parenting. Conclusions: Although the participating children's digital game addiction tendencies were low, the findings indicate that parents and carers should guide children to reduce their screen time and promote increased interaction with their surroundings and other people to mitigate screen time's known negative effects on gross motor coordination.