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Parental Phubbing and Adolescents’ Depressive Symptoms: Self-Esteem and Perceived Social Support as Moderators

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A Correction to this article was published on 05 June 2020

This article has been updated

Abstract

Parental phubbing refers to the extent to which parents use or are distracted by their cell phone when they interact with their children. There has been growing scholarly interest in understanding the adverse effects of parental phubbing on adolescents’ development. However, it is less clear whether parental phubbing potentially increases adolescents' depressive symptoms, to date, and the understanding of the factors which may affect this relationship is also limited. The current study, therefore, examined the relationship between parental phubbing and adolescents’ depressive symptoms and sought to determine whether self-esteem and perceived social support simultaneously moderated this relationship. The participants included 2407 students (1202 girls; Mage = 12.75, SD = 0.58) from seven middle schools in China. They completed the questionnaires regarding their experience with parental phubbing, self-esteem, perceived social support, and depressive symptoms. Results indicated that adolescents with a high level of parental phubbing were likely to have a high level of depressive symptoms, after controlling age, gender, and perceived economic stress. Low self-esteem adolescents who experienced higher levels of parental phubbing were more likely to be depressed than high self-esteem adolescents. Furthermore, higher levels of parental phubbing significantly predicted increases in adolescents’ depressive symptoms when their self-esteem and perceived social support were both low, or one was low. In contrast, this effect became nonsignificant when adolescents’ self-esteem and perceived social support were both high. Parents who are concerned about adolescents’ depressive symptoms should pay closer attention to adolescents' self-esteem, as well as their perceived social support, in order to provide appropriate interventions.

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  • 05 June 2020

    An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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Acknowledgements

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors. We would like to thank all of the school partners and adolescents who participated in this study.

Authors’ Contributions

X.W. conceived of the study with J.Y., performed the statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript; L.G. participated in the design and coordination of the project, interpretation of the results and revising the draft; F.Z. participated in the design and coordination of the project and interpretation of the data; PW assisted with drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by Program for the Innovative Talents of Higher Education Institutions of Shanxi (PTIT) to X.W.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Educational Science, Shanxi University, No. 92 Wucheng Road, Xiaodian District, Taiyuan, 030006, China

    Xingchao Wang, Ling Gao & Jiping Yang

  2. School of Education, Zhengzhou University, No. 100 Science Street, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Fengqing Zhao

  3. The Center of Internet and Social Psychology, Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100872, China

    Pengcheng Wang

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  1. Xingchao Wang
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  2. Ling Gao
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Correspondence to Fengqing Zhao.

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Wang, X., Gao, L., Yang, J. et al. Parental Phubbing and Adolescents’ Depressive Symptoms: Self-Esteem and Perceived Social Support as Moderators. J Youth Adolescence 49, 427–437 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01185-x

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