A Comparison of Motor Skills and Body Mass Index of Children with/without Internet Addiction

The aim of this study was to compare motor skills and body mass index of male students (7 to 10 years old) with and without internet addiction. Participants included 150 students with internet addiction and 150 students without internet addiction. After their parents filled out the consent forms and the students' personal information was recorded, the groups firstly were identified by the Kimberly Young Internet Addiction Questionnaire. Body mass index of participants were recorded by stadiometer and scale, and then their motor skills were assessed by the Bruininks - Oseretsky test. To classify the data, measures of central tendency and dispersion in the descriptive statistics were used. To analyze the data, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and independent t test were used in the inferential statistics. All research analysis was investigated at the significance level (P<0.05). The results showed significant differences in gross and fine motor skills, motor proficiency as well as body mass index between students with and without internet addiction, that is to say children with internet addiction showed poorer performance in gross and fine motor skills and motor proficiency. Also, they had more body mass index. Internet addiction may be accompanied with obesity and poor performance in gross motor skills. Therefore, it is recommended that the necessary steps should be taken to prevent these problems.