The impact of parental phubbing on social withdrawal in preschool children: the serial mediating roles of parent–child conflict and negative emotions

BACKGROUND: The positive association of parental phubbing with internalizing and externalizing problems among adolescents has gained academic traction. However, current researches on the negative impacts of parental phubbing have focused primarily on adolescents, with a noticeable lack of studies concerning preschool children, and there is also a deficiency in investigations from the perspective of the Risky Family Model. These gaps limit our understanding of how parental phubbing affects problem behaviors among preschool children. To address this gap, the present study constructed a chain mediation model to examine the association between parental phubbing and social withdrawal in preschool children, by introducing two mediating variables-parent-child conflict and negative emotions. METHODS: A sample of 739 preschool children (mean age 5.04 years, SD = 0.84) and their parents participated in the study. The parents completed measures of the Parental Phubbing Scale, Child-Parent Relationship Scale, Children's Behavior Questionnaire, and Child Social Preference Scale. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the four scales were 0.75, 0.84, 0.74, and 0.83, respectively. All the measures showed good reliability and validity in the present study. The data were analyzed via SPSS 26.0 and SPSS PROCESS. RESULTS: The results indicated that (1) parental phubbing had a significant positive effect on social withdrawal in young children; (2) parent-child conflict and negative emotions independently mediated the relationship between parental phubbing and social withdrawal in young children; and (3) parent-child conflict and negative emotions served as serial mediators in the relationship between parental phubbing and social withdrawal in young children. CONCLUSIONS: These findings in the present study contribute to understanding the mechanisms underlying the association between parental phubbing and social withdrawal and have important implications for interventions aimed at improving social withdrawal among preschool children in China. Furthermore, the present study first introduced parental phubbing into the Risky Family Model, expanding the applicability of this model.