Rules? Role Model? Relationship? The Impact of Parents on Their Children’s Problematic Mobile Phone Involvement

ABSTRACT

Parents can influence their children’s problematic mobile phone involvement (PMPI) by engaging in parental mediation activities, such as restrictions or co-use, by being a role model, and by their general and domain-unspecific parenting style that facilitates more or less attachment security of the child. This study tested the associations between these different routes of influence—parental mediation of the mobile phone, parental PMPI, and secure child-parent attachment—with children’s PMPI. Data was acquired from a quota-sample survey with 500 children, between 8 and 14 years of age, and one of their parents. Results point to the importance of open and empathic parent-child-communication, as well as a positive relationship quality, and demonstrate the detrimental effects of parents’ own PMPI on children’s PMPI.

Notes

^1. The aspect of tolerance, i.e. a rising need to use the mobile phone, was added basing on the conceptualization of Brown (1997) and other conceptualizations of Internet addiction such as Young (1998).

^2. We chose those three items of each subscale that had high factor loadings and represented altogether the whole range of (slightly) different aspects of anxiety and avoidance.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (LfM).