A Sociological Impact of Smart Mobile Phones on Child Abuse Among School Children (Comparative Analysis from Urban and Rural Samples)

Abstract

Biologically, a child (plural; children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the development period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of child generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. The term ‘children’ is defined as the group below the age of 18 years. Moreover , biologically a child is introduced as an individual who is physically mentally and socially immature. Child abuse is the process in which children are misused and maltreated. Thus, it can be further defined as misusing children physically, vocally, mentally, sexually and bluntly harassing them. In this context there are several ways in which a child is abounded. It affected they can be named and neglected harassments. At present, the smart mobile phones is prominent among new technological tool. However, children are abused in several ways through the use of the smart mobile phones. Hence this research focuses on the different ways of child abuses that are caused through the use the smart mobile phones.The problem of this research is how smart mobile phone usage impacts on the child abuse. The objective is to identify the behavioral changes and deviance occurred among the children due to the smart mobile phone usage. Data was obtain from a semi-structured interview and questionnaires using a purposive sample of 100 students from 10 schools (under O/L to A/L). Five schools from Anuradhapura in North Central province, Five schools from Colombo, Dehiwala , Mount Laviniya from Western province and 20 teachers of the 10 schools were used in the study. The data was qualitatively analyzed by the Spss software. Accordingly, the violence activities increase viewing pornographic materials tendency of doing risky things. Findings were not different according to the geographical area (location).Rural and urban limitations could not be identified in Sri Lankan using the smart mobile phones. Mobile phones were affected to of their education process and day. Finally, it has been identified the usage of smart mobile phones has impacted on the memory capacity of the students.