The Relationship between Gadget Addiction and Early Child Growth in Malaysia

Modern technology helps advance humans forward and makes it more effective and efficient in completing routine tasks. Technology also helped in establishing the revolution in knowledge and skills among people. Children are no exception, also involved in the development of this technology, especially with the use of gadgets. The rise in gadget usage among young children around the world has raised concerns about the influence of addiction on child development. Thus, this study aims to identify the relationship gadget addiction on young children in Malaysia with language development and health development. This study is targeted at parents (mothers or fathers) who have a child aged 0 to 75 months. Thus, 144 respondents were chosen used nonprobability sampling which is convenience sampling and questionnaires were distributed through social media such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Telegram. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences 28.0 version Software focusing on Pearson Correlation to identify the association between gadget addiction with social and language development and health development. The results show that gadget addiction has moderate positive relationships with language development and health development. It shows that gadgets are not main tools interfere with language development and health development among early child in Malaysia. This finding will help parents to teach their child how to use the gadgets responsibly. Additionally, it also helps educators, especially teachers in child education, to study this topic to maintain good and active student achievement inside the classroom. It is important for device makers to develop appropriate apps for young children because device makers play a major role in the development of this ecosystem.