Parental Psychological Control and Addiction Behaviors in Smartphone and Internet: The Mediating Role of Shyness among Adolescents

Abstract

Parental psychological control has been found to be a vital familial factor that is closely related to adolescents’ addiction behaviors with regard to smartphones and the internet. However, the underlying mechanisms of these associations are less clear. The aim of the present study was to examine whether shyness mediated the relationships between parental psychological control and these two addiction behaviors. A positivist paradigm was used in the present study. The questionnaires (parental psychological control, shyness, and smartphone and internet addiction questionnaires) were used to collect data from a sample of 1857 Chinese adolescents (961 female, 896 male) in junior and senior middle schools. Descriptive statistics as well as correlation and mediation tests were employed to analyze the data. We observed that adolescents with siblings showed a higher level of internet addiction than those with no siblings. Moreover, three dimensions of parental psychological control were positively associated with addiction behaviors. The following analyses displayed that the correlation between authority assertion and smartphone addiction was greater than that between authority assertion and internet addiction. Subsequently, shyness was significantly positively related to parental psychological control and addiction behaviors. Importantly, we found that the relations between the three dimensions of parental psychological control and the addiction behaviors concerning smartphones and the internet were partially mediated by shyness. This study contributes to our understanding of how parental psychological control predicts high levels of adolescents’ addiction behaviors surrounding smartphones and the internet.

Factors contributing to online game addiction in adolescents: a systematic review

“…Shyness is defined as a form of discomfort with oneself (feeling strange, too self-conscious) and tends to become someone else to fit in with the desired social environment [38]. Shy individuals tend to feel anxious and insecure because they feel judged and afraid of rejection by others when establishing direct interpersonal relationships.…”

“…The most relevant factors in parenting and parental communication related to gaming addiction are hazardous family connections, family union troubles [39], parental emotional well-being issues, and the shortfall of rules for web gaming usage [40]. Three aspects of psychological parental control are linked to addictive behaviour [38], [41]. Parental mental control, a subset of parental control, can be defined as parental behaviour that interferes with and manipulates a child's ideas, feelings, and attachment to their parents.…”