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Kinship Support Differentially Predicts Problematic Smartphone Use in Left-behind Children Compared to Non-left-behind Children: A Longitudinal Study

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Abstract

Currently, severe problematic smartphone use among left-behind children in China is a prevalent issue. However, there is still relatively little research focusing on left-behind children’s problematic smartphone use. Left-behind children refer to children aged 6–16 who are left behind in their rural hometowns due to at least one of their parents working outside of the hometown. Based on the family systems theory, this study aims to investigate the predictive associations between different types of kinship support (parental support, grandparental support, and other relatives’ support) and problematic smartphone use among left-behind children. A total of 415 children participated in our survey, undergoing three longitudinal tests (Mage= 12.95, SD = 0.92, 286 left-behind children, 129 non-left-behind children). The results indicated that, compared to non-left-behind children, parental support had a more stable negative delayed effect (delayed effects mean stable predictive effects across time) on problematic smartphone use of left-behind children. Moreover, other relatives’ support had a marginally significant negative prediction on problematic smartphone use in left-behind children. Conversely, grandparental support had a positive delayed effect on problematic smartphone use of left-behind children, unlike the negative delayed effect of grandparental support on non-left-behind children’s problematic smartphone use. These findings highlight the differential effects of various kinship support systems on problematic smartphone use among left-behind children, providing new insights for intervention strategies based on the family systems theory.

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Data Availability

The data supporting the findings are not available due to privacy or ethical restrictions, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Hunan province college students research learning and innovative experiment project (S202310542112) for inspiring and helping with this work. Thanks to Jiali He for her extremely important and valuable help in methodology, investigation, data curation and analysis. Thanks again to the cooperation of the research participants and the great help of all the members of the research group. Correspondence concerning this article should be emailed to xiangyh@hunnu.edu.cn.

Funding

This work was supported by the General Program of the National Social Science Fund of China (23BSH144). The funding source had no influence on the study design, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Moral Culture Research Center of Hunan Normal University, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China

    Ji Shan & Yanhui Xiang

  2. Research Center for Mental Health Education of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China

    Ji Shan & Yanhui Xiang

  3. Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China

    Ji Shan & Yanhui Xiang

  4. Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal Universtity, Changsha, China

    Liping Ma

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  1. Ji Shan
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Contributions

J.S.: Formal analysis, Writing - Original Draft, Review & Editing, Visualization. L.M.: Formal analysis, Validation, Data Curation, Writing - Review & Editing. Y.X.: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing - Review & Editing, Supervision. All authors read and approved this version to be submitted for pubilication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yanhui Xiang.

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The present study was approved by the Academic Committee of the Department of Psychology of Hunan Normal University. All participants provided informed consents before completing the questionnaires, and were paid after completing the whole questionnaires.

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Shan, J., Ma, L. & Xiang, Y. Kinship Support Differentially Predicts Problematic Smartphone Use in Left-behind Children Compared to Non-left-behind Children: A Longitudinal Study. Int J Ment Health Addiction (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-023-01180-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-023-01180-1

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