Optimizing Parental Control Applications to Mitigate Smartphone Addiction Among Santri During Pesantren Holidays: A Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract

This study aims to optimize existing parental control applications to mitigate smartphone addiction among santri (Islamic boarding school students) during pesantren holidays—a period when institutional supervision decreases and unrestricted access to digital devices often heightens the risk of addiction. The research employed a mixed-methods design with a convergent parallel approach, integrating quantitative data from pre-post surveys and qualitative data from the analysis of parental control application logs. Participants included santri from Al Khafidh pesantren in the Merangin, Jambi region, along with their parents, purposively sampled based on indicators of smartphone addiction symptoms during holidays. The intervention involved optimizing application features such as screen time restrictions, content filtering, and usage monitoring. The results demonstrated highly significant progress: the average smartphone addiction level on the pre-test reached 40% (moderate to high category), while the post-test showed an 85% improvement. This progress was marked by reduced daily screen time, a substantial increase in active parental supervision patterns, and enhanced self-regulation among santri. This finding highlights the novelty of applying optimized existing digital tools within the specific context of santri during pesantren holidays, an area rarely explored in previous studies. The study concludes that optimizing parental control applications represents an effective, practical, and scalable solution to reduce the negative impacts of smartphone addiction while strengthening the role of parents in digital parenting aligned with pesantren educational values. The implications include recommendations for pesantren to integrate parental control training programs for parents to support balanced character education in the digital era.