This study examines the relationship among children's smart device immersion tendency, children's self-regulation, and pro-social behavior as well as investigates the mediating effect of self-regulation between children's smart device immersion tendency and pro-social behavior. Participants were composed of 263 4-year-old children attending kindergarten in Incheon and Gyeonggi province. Data were analyzed by means of Pearson's correlation coefficients in SPSS, the structural equation model and bootstrapping in AMOS. The results are as follows. First, there is a statistically meaningful relationship among children's smart device immersion tendency, self-regulation, and pro-social behavior. There is a negative correlation between children's smart device immersion tendency and children's self-regulation as well as pro-social behavior; however, there is positive relationship between children's self-regulation and pro-social behavior. Second, children's smart device immersion tendency had a direct effect on children's self-regulation. In addition, children's self-regulation indicated a direct effect on children's pro-social behavior. Third, children's self-regulation was found sufficient to mediate the relationship between children's smart device immersion tendency and pro-social behavior. The results indicate that the effort to increase children's self-regulation may decrease the negative effect toward children's pro-social behavior caused by smart device immersion tendencies.
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