The associations of adolescent problematic internet use with parenting: A meta-analysis
Introduction
The problematic use of screens in children and adolescents is receiving increasing attention. Unlike early studies on the use of screens that were focused predominantly on TV, current research on problematic (addictive) screen use predominantly targets the internet (Browne et al., 2021, Tran et al., 2020). The use of the internet has globally risen over the last decade (Kuss & Billieux, 2017). Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the risks related to its use (Király et al., 2020), which seem to be especially prevalent in adolescents (Kuss et al., 2014). In pursuit of preventing adolescent problematic internet use (PIU), researchers have tried to identify various factors associated with it. Parenting—the sum of practices that parents are using to promote desirable outcomes in their child—is one of the most prevalent among the examined factors. This is not surprising given that parenting, namely parental responsiveness and strictness (control), has previously been confirmed to affect other forms of adolescent risk or harmful behaviors (González-Cámara et al., 2019).
It is important to distinguish between two concepts of parenting: (1) general parenting, which reflects general parenting practices and the overall relationship between parents and their child, and (2) specific parenting, which reflects parental regulation efforts related to a specific area of the child’s behavior—e.g., use of screens/media.
In the context of (problematic) screen/media use, the effect of media-specific parenting on the extent of children’s (problematic) media use has been analyzed with inconclusive results (Collier et al., 2016, Fam et al., 2022, Jago et al., 2013, Nielsen et al., 2019). To the best of our knowledge, no literature review or meta-analysis focusing on the relationship between general parenting (warmth and control) and PIU has been published to date. The lack of knowledge on the relationships between parenting on adolescent PIU may pose a problem. Parents are important regulators of online media consumption in children and adolescents because online media are widely available (or even penetrative) and their consumption in children cannot be regulated legislatively as opposed to addictive substances (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, drugs) or activities (e.g., gambling) for which age limits are often applied. Therefore, we need to understand the role of parents in child and adolescent PIU in order to promote and strengthen the preventative efforts of parents. It should be noted that the excessive/addictive use of online media is only one aspect of the use that would benefit from the effective parental regulation; other aspects include at-risk internet use (e.g., self-disclosing behavior, sexting) and cyber-aggression (e.g., cyber-bullying, cyber-victimization) (Fineberg et al., 2018) but these were beyond the scope of this study.
Section snippets
Problematic internet use
PIU, sometimes referred to as Internet Addiction or Excessive Internet Use, can be broadly defined as the inability to inhibit online activities despite their negative consequences (Kuss et al., 2014). PIU has recently been proposed as an umbrella term for various potentially problematic (addictive) behaviors related to the use of the internet, namely, gaming, gambling, shopping, pornography viewing, social networking and ‘cyberchondria’ (Fineberg et al., 2018). It has been demonstrated that
Methods
This review was conducted in accordance with the preferred reporting guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analyses – PRISMA 2020 (Page et al., 2021). The review protocol used in this study was not previously registered.
General parental warmth
The pooled correlation between warmth and PIU (k = 24) has been established to be r = -0.17 (95% CI [-0.20, -0.13], p <.001), suggesting that warmth has a small negative association with PIU. The prediction interval (95% PI [-0.32, -0.02]) indicates that the association between PIU and warmth is as low as -0.32 in some populations but close to zero (-0.02) in others. The total heterogeneity was as high as I2 = 92.54% (Q(23) = 308.40, p <.01; τ2 = 0.01), and the associations reported by studies
Discussion
We assessed the associations between PIU and five parental factors (warmth, control, authoritative parenting, active mediation, and restrictive mediation). In case of all analyses, we found high overall heterogeneity between studies. The heterogeneity was higher in the case of media-specific parenting (active and restrictive mediation) than in the case of general parenting (warmth, control, and authoritative parenting). The pooled associations between PIU and media-specific parenting were close
Conclusions
General parenting (warmth, control, authoritative parenting) has a weak negative association with PIU. In contrast, media-specific parenting—i.e., parenting strategies focused specifically on the regulation of the internet use of children—has a close to zero association with PIU. This shows the necessity to conduct more studies that would identify effective media/internet-specific parenting strategies for the prevention of children/adolescent PIU.
Availability of data and material: Data are
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: ELTE Eötvös Loránd University receives funding from the Szerencsejáték Ltd. to maintain a telephone helpline service for problematic gambling. Dr. Demetrovics has also been involved in research on responsible gambling funded by Szerencsejáték Ltd. and the Gambling Supervision Board and provided educational materials for the Szerencsejáték Ltd’s responsible
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