Put down the phone and accompany me: How parental phubbing undermines prosocial behavior of early adolescents

Chunyan Xu and Xiaochun Xie

Children and Youth Services Review, 2023, vol. 149, issue C

Abstract: Parental phubbing can exert negative effects on the adolescents themselves or their interaction with parents. However, less attention has been paid to the interaction with the environment or people outside the family system, such as prosocial behavior. Therefore, this study mainly conducted two studies to explore the influence of parental phubbing on adolescents' prosocial behavior, as well as the mechanisms underlying. Study 1 preliminarily investigated the relationship by using the cross-sectional method (n = 445, Mage = 15.03 ± 0.98 years, 48.3 % were boys). Study 2 adopted a longitudinal study with an interval of 7 months (n = 432, Mage = 14.55 ± 0.61 years, 49.5 % were boys). The participants in two surveys were chosen from Chinese early adolescents. Two studies showed that (1) parental phubbing negatively predicted early adolescents' prosocial behavior; (2) parent-adolescent attachment played a mediating role in the relationship between parental phubbing and early adolescents' prosocial behavior; (3) parent-adolescent attachment and gratitude played sequential mediating roles in the relationship. The results of the present study suggest that parental phubbing deteriorates early adolescents’ prosocial behavior through decreasing parent-adolescent attachment, or through parent-adolescent attachment and gratitude together.

Keywords: Parental phubbing; Prosocial behavior; Parent-adolescent attachment; Gratitude; Early adolescents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740923001536
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:149:y:2023:i:c:s0190740923001536

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.106958

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().