IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ariqol/v20y2025i4d10.1007_s11482-025-10477-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Parental Smartphone Addiction and Child Social Avoidance: the Moderated Parallel Mediation of Parent-Child Relationship

Author

Listed:
  • Jingjing Zhu

    (Shanghai Normal University
    Ministry of Education)

  • Jiayu Luo

    (Shanghai Normal University)

  • Junyang Feng

    (Shanghai Normal University)

  • Yan Li

    (Shanghai Normal University
    Ministry of Education)

Abstract

Employing a moderated parallel mediation model, this study investigated the influence mechanism of parental smartphone addiction on children’s social avoidance among 1586 parent-child dyads (Mage =51.19 months, SD = 13.49) in Shanghai, China. The results revealed that: (1) maternal smartphone addiction positively predicted children’s social avoidance; (2) mother-child closeness and mother-child conflict significantly mediated the relationship between maternal smartphone addiction and children’s social avoidance, accounting for 13.33% and 45% of the total effect, respectively; (3) mother-child conflict moderated the relationship between paternal smartphone addiction and children’s social avoidance, with the association being significant only when mother-child conflict was below 1.65 SD. Both mother-child conflict and mother-child closeness moderated the relationship between father-child closeness and children’s social avoidance, with the association being significant only when mother-child conflict was above 0.002 SD and mother-child closeness was below − 1.40 SD. These findings suggest that enhancing parent-child closeness and reducing parent-child conflict may buffer the adverse effects of parental smartphone addiction on children’s social avoidance.

Suggested Citation

  • Jingjing Zhu & Jiayu Luo & Junyang Feng & Yan Li, 2025. "Parental Smartphone Addiction and Child Social Avoidance: the Moderated Parallel Mediation of Parent-Child Relationship," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 20(4), pages 1493-1516, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:20:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s11482-025-10477-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11482-025-10477-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11482-025-10477-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11482-025-10477-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:20:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s11482-025-10477-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.