ArticleJournal of youth and adolescence2025
The Vicious Cycle? Parental Phubbing and Adolescent Psychological Distress: The Mediating Role of Psychological Inflexibility across Different Adolescence Stages.
Article in Journal of youth and adolescence, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Techno-interference as an inverse proximal process: Within-person pathways from parental phubbing to cyber deviance via loneliness in early and late adolescence.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2026Article
- The Association Between Parental Phubbing and Preschoolers' Excessive Electronic Media Use: The Chain Mediating Role of Parent-Child Attachment and Self-Control.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Parental phubbing, defined as the neglectful diversion of attention from children to smartphones, increases adolescent psychological distress and may perpetuate a reciprocal cycle, highlighting the need to understand its dynamics and mechanisms. This study investigated the bidirectional longitudinal associations between parental phubbing and adolescent psychological distress, the mediating role of psychological inflexibility, and the moderating role of adolescence stage (early vs. late adolescence). A total of 1055 adolescents (initial M age = 14.86 ± 1.70 years, range = 11–18, n girl = 537) completed questionnaires at three waves over a one-year period (six-month interval) in China. Through the application of random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM), the results revealed significant positive associations between parental phubbing and adolescent psychological distress at both between- and within-person levels, with reciprocal effects observed. Psychological inflexibility mediated these associations, with the mediating effect being more pronounced during early adolescence. These results indicate psychological inflexibility is a modifiable factor for breaking the vicious cycle between parental phubbing and adolescent psychological distress, particularly for early adolescents, offering clear directions for future family-based interventions.
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Registered trials
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