The Relationship of Parent-Child Technoference and Child Problematic Smartphone Use: The Roles of Parent-Child Relationship, Negative Parenting Styles, and Children’s Gender

Tingting Shao,1 Chengwei Zhu,2 Hanning Lei,2 Yiru Jiang,3 Haitao Wang,4 Cai Zhang2 1Institute of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 2Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment for Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 3School of Education Science, Shangrao Normal University, Shangrao, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of education, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Cai Zhang, Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment for Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China, Email caizhangbj@163.comPurpose: With the increasing ubiquity of smartphones in our daily lives, technoference has emerged as a novel threat to family relationships and child development. This study explored the impact of parent-child technoference on child problematic smartphone use and its underlying mechanism and potential gender difference among children.Participants and Methods: The participants were 3032 fourth-grade students (42.6% female; 80.6% one-child families; 32.9% lower income level families, 33.3% middle income level families; Mage = 10.59 years, SD=0.32) from 535 primary schools. Students in the target classes were invited to participate anonymously in the questionnaire survey in classrooms. Then, SPSS, AMOS and other software were used to analyze the data.Results: 1) Parent-child technoference, negative parenting styles and child problematic smartphone use were positively correlated with each other, while they were negatively correlated with parent-child relationship; 2) Parent-child technoference can not only directly and positively predict child problematic smartphone use, but also indirectly and positively predict child problematic smartphone use through parent-child relationship and negative parenting styles respectively; 3) Parent-child relationship and negative parenting styles play a chain mediating role between parent-child technoference and child problematic smartphone use; 4) There are significant gender differences in the chain mediation model.Conclusion: The results showed that parent-child technoference significantly affected child problematic smartphone use through a chain mediation of parent-child relationship and negative parenting styles. Gender differences were observed, with girls experiencing a more pronounced disruption in the parent-child relationship, while boys were more likely to develop problematic smartphone use. In cases of strained parent-child relationships due to technoference, girls also tended to perceive more negative parenting styles. These findings promote parents’ understanding of the influencing factors and mechanisms of child problematic smartphone use, especially helpful for follow-up measures to prevent and intervene child problematic smartphone use from the perspective of families and parents.Keywords: parent-child technoference, parent-child relationship, negative parenting styles, child problematic smartphone use, gender difference