Parent’s perception regarding mobile phone usage led behaviour changes in children. Sara Devamani S, Hymi Paul, Josmi George, Sameera Begum, Sharin Neetal Dsouza, Melba Roshini Lobo * Department of Child Health Nursing, Yenepoya Nursing College, Mangaluru, Karnataka, India Abstract Introduction: Children spend most of their time playing games. Olden days they were playing with toys and friends but now they just use mobile for play and that only has become their friend. Child enthusiasm towards it is more than any other age group. Mobile phones have become the integral part of child’s life. The attraction towards mobile phone has created several physical, psychological and social changes in children and parents are concerned about the increased usage. Children will use mobile phones so excessively that it tends to change their behaviour. So this study was carried out to know the parents perception about behavioural changes of their children due to the usage of mobile phone Methods: The present descriptive survey was conducted among parents working in Yenepoya deemed to be university campus including 110 parents of children aged between 6-12 years who were selected through non-probability purposive sampling technique method. The samples were administered with self-structured questionnaire regarding perceived behavioural changes after checking the validity and reliability (r=0.8) of the tool. The collected data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: It was observed that 41.8% of parents perceived difficulty in calming down the child when child is aggressive. 36.4% parents perceived that children get distracted frequently. 36.4% of parents agreed that child becomes very sensitive for simple matters, 34.5% of parents agreed for child showing less interest in eating food. In behaviour score category which ranges from 1-80, 50.9% of children’s falls in category of 21-40 grade of behaviour score, 45.4% between 41-60 grades of behaviour score, which depict that they are in the risk of getting addiction to mobile phone. In this study the association between behavioural score and selected demographic variable, indicates there is no significant association between demographic variable and behaviour change of the children at p<0.05 level of significance. Conclusion: The study revealed that most of the parents have perceived behaviour changes in children. Most of the parents agreed that it effects on child’s food eating patterns, frequently getting distracted, difficulty in calming down when they are in aggressive mood, their sensitivity for simple matters, and they like to stay at home rather than spending time with friends. All the findings affect the growth and development of the child. Keywords: Perception, Mobile phone, Children, Behaviour change. Accepted on December 17 th , 2019 Introduction Technological advancements have created many changes in the day to day life of people. It is reported that the India ’ s telecommunication market is the second largest in the world. The mobile phone technology has brought the world closer. The mobile phones are very handy for the people either for calling or texting. Now, mobile phones are coming up with variety of features like internet access, sending e-mails, games, access to social networking sites like face-book, listening to music, playing radio, reading books, dictionary and so on. In simple words we can say that it has lots of features which are more helpful [1]. Mobile phone is not only being used by the corporate or highly qualified professional, it also be used the people from all type of social group. Usage of mobile phone is not increased only with all social groups but also with people of all age groups. Children are the more noticeable group as they are using cell phones of all types. The recent research study shows that children are really capable of using any advanced type of mobile phones even without any proper guidance and help. Though mobile phones are the effective mode of communication it is a well-known fact that it also has adverse side effects if being over used [2]. This changing trend of mobile phone for multitasking is day by day increasing as well as leading to certain changes in behaviour and personality of users [3]. Curr Pediatr Res 2019; 23 (4): 143-147 ISSN: 0971-9032 www.currentpediatrics.com Curr Pediatr Res 2019 Volume 23 Issue 4 143