How does perceived parental rejection influence cyberbullying by children? A serial mediation model of children’s depression and smartphone addiction

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to explore the relationships between perceived parental rejection and cyberbullying by children and the independent and sequential mediating roles of children’s depression and smartphone addiction. The study used data from the 2019 Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey, which included 2,364 children. The relationships between the variables considered in this study were tested using hierarchical regression analysis and Hayes’s PROCESS macro (Model 6). We found that perceived parental rejection was positively linked with cyberbullying perpetration, and that the relationship between these variables was independently and sequentially mediated by children’s depression and smartphone addiction. These results suggest that when assessing cyberbullying by children, parenting behaviors, children’s psychological state, and media use should be considered simultaneously.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental rejection
• Childhood depression
• Children’s smartphone addiction
• Children’s cyberbullying perpetration

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are part of the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey repository and are available at https://www.nypi.re.kr/archive/mps.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (<#AWARD-ID;>NRF–2021S1A5C2A02088387</#AWARD-ID;>).