Abstract
Parents play a crucial role in adolescents’ Internet use. Both general parenting (i.e., autonomy-supportive and controlling parenting) and Internet-specific parenting (i.e., restrictive mediation, active mediation, and parental encouragement) are related to adolescents’ online behaviors. However, existing studies have focused either on an Internet-specific parenting or general parenting strategy and have neglected their interaction, failing to capture the intricate nature of the parenting context of youth’s online behaviors. Few studies have examined parental encouragement or acknowledged the bidirectional influence of parenting on adolescents’ online behaviors. To address this gap, this study employed a cross-lagged panel network model to examine the associations among restrictive and active mediation, parental encouragement, and autonomy-supportive and controlling parenting, as well as the interplay of all five parenting strategies with adolescents’ online behaviors. A total of 564 Chinese students (51.1% male; mean age = 14.54, SD = 0.7) completed the survey at two time points. The results indicate that in most cases, previous online behaviors are significant and strong predictors of subsequent parenting strategies and not vice versa, corroborating the child effect. The parent and reciprocal effects were observed in the problematic smartphone-use domain, suggesting that the effects may differ for distinct behavioral domains. The effects of parental mediation extend beyond parental encouragement, implying that risk-prevention-related parenting is an effective means of guiding adolescents’ online behaviors. Autonomy-relevant general parenting is closely related to active mediation and parental encouragement, while restrictive general parenting is closely related to restrictive mediation, suggesting a consistency between Internet-specific and general parenting strategies.
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The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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We would like to thank all of the school partners and adolescents who participated in this study.
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This research has been sponsored by the Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (22JJD190002) and the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (2022BSH002).
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W.T. conceived of the study, participated in its design and interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; W.H. conceived of the study, and participated in its design and interpretation of the data, W.H. contributed equally with W.T. to this work; Y.W. collected the data and performed data analysis; C.X. assisted with drafting the manuscript; L.F. assisted with drafting the manuscript; X.F. conceived of the study, provided research funding, and helped to draft the manuscript; J.J. conceived of the study, collected the data, and participated in interpretation of the data, X.F. and J.J. are corresponding authors. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Tong, W., He, W., Wang, Y. et al. Associations Between Internet-Specific Parenting, General Parenting, and Adolescents’ Online Behaviors: A Cross-Lagged Panel Network Analysis. J. Youth Adolescence (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-024-01981-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-024-01981-0