How Parents’ Phubbing Behavior Affects Young People’s Phone Addiction

We cannot deny that the younger generation regularly uses their mobile phones. But there are now also many high school students, adolescents or teenagers who experience a real telephone addiction. New scientific research shows that parents may well play a role in this.

Familiar with the term phubbing? Phubbing means that someone focuses on their phone and shuts themselves off from those around them. And should you, as a parent, be guilty of this and thereby forget to pay attention to your child? Then it may well be that your son or daughter also grabs his or her phone more often. Earlier, psychologist Thijs Launspach told Metro about the toxic and addictive influence of social media and that we as users can’t even do much about it.

Phone addiction young people

New research, which was published in Frontiers in Psychology, shows that teens or adolescents with a telephone addiction often have parents who are guilty of phubbing.

In the current era, there are many young people who spend a lot of time on their phones and spend hours of screen time. Getting addicted to a cell phone is a serious problem. And affects school performance, relationships and sleep behavior. But this craving for a phone isn’t too great for impulse control and the ability to delay gratification either. Mainly high school students, who are experiencing full growth and development, can lose their cognitive and social development due to a telephone addiction. As a parent, you would rather not see your child become too dependent on a smartphone.

Parents are guilty of phubbing

Researcher Zenhong Mi and his team set out to identify possible causes of phone addiction among the younger generation. And the ‘phubbing’ behavior of the parents was also examined. So parents ignore their child to concentrate on a phone. Twelve hundred Chinese high school students answered questions about their parents’ phone use, smartphone addiction, the relationship between parents and children and the quality of friendships.

And what turned out? Adolescents who were more prone to telephone addiction reported a higher degree of phubbing from their parents. In addition, they scored low on parent-child relationship. It also turned out that high school students with low friendship quality were more vulnerable to an addiction to their phone. On the other hand, the research results show that a good relationship between parent and child and friendships of young people ensure that the risk of a telephone addiction decreases.

Notes on research

As with any study, there are caveats to these findings. All participants came from China. The results may differ in other countries. In addition, the participants themselves answered the questions and the researchers must rely on their experiences and reliability. Nevertheless, the study emphasizes the importance of parental behavior and young people’s attitudes towards their phones. With which we can conclude that as a parent, you still have to set a good example yourself.

Parenting question: ‘My parents put pictures of my children on social media, while I don’t want that’