The Relationship Between Parental Phubbing And Children And Adolescents’ Academic Procrastination:a Moderated Mediation Model

Smartphones have replaced traditional PCs,and are now widely used in various aspects of people’s lifelives,including consumer circulation,life services,culture and entertainment,medical education and more.However,this widespread use has also led to a common social phenomenon known as parental phubbing,where parents become overly focused on their smartphone and neglect their children during interactions or even leave them alone.Recent studies have highlighted the negative impact of parental phubbing on the psychology and behavior of children and adolescents.This new family risk factor has been linked to negative emotions such as anxiety,depression,smartphone addiction,and aggression.However,the relationship between parental phubbing and academic procrastination in children and adolescents,as well as its underlying mechanisms,remains unclear.Therefore,this study aims to investigate the relationship between parental phubbing and academic procrastination in children and adolescents,along with its underlying mechanisms.In order to examine the mediating role of internalizing problems and the moderating role of psychological flexibility and environmental sensitivity,this study constructed a mediated model with moderation from the perspectives of Parental Acceptance-rejection Theory,Cognitive-contextual Framework,and Individual-environmental Interaction Model.This study used a questionnaire survey method,total of 2307 students in a nine-year school in Kaifeng,Henan Province,were surveyed.They were investigated with the Parental Phubbing Scale,Patient Health Questionnaire-4,Academic Procrastination Scale,Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth,and Highly Sensitive Child(HSC)Scale.The results indicated that:(1)Parental phubbing,internalization problems,environmental sensitivity,psychological flexibility,and academic procrastination were correlated with each other.(2)After controlling for gender and grade,parental phubbing could positively predict children and adolescents’ academic procrastination.(3)Internalization problems played a mediating role between parental phubbing and academic procrastination.(4)Environmental sensitivity played a moderating role between internalization problems and children and adolescents’ academic procrastination.With higher environmental sensitivity,internalization problems had less impact on children and adolescents’ academic procrastination;With lower environmental sensitivity,internalization problems had a more significant impact on children and adolescents’ academic procrastination.(5)Psychological flexibility played a regulatory role in the relationship between parental phubbing and internalization problems.Parental phubbing had a more significant impact on children and adolescents’ internalization problems when their psychological flexibility was low;but it had less impact on children and adolescents’ internalization problems when their psychological flexibility was high.The results of these studies suggest that parental phubbing can be linked both directly to child-adolescent academic procrastination and through the mediating role of internalizing problems and the moderating role of environmental sensitivity and psychological flexibility.The result enriches the research on parental phubbing on children and adolescents’ academic adjustment.It also contributes to parents,teachers,and schools to take adequate measures to reduce children’s procrastination.