Parental phubbing, loneliness, and adolescent materialism: A cross-lagged panel study

An increasing number of researchers are focusing on the adverse consequences of parental phubbing, however, it remains unstudied whether and how parental phubbing impact adolescent materialism. To address the research gap, we investigated the temporal and bidirectional relationships between parental phubbing, loneliness, and adolescent materialism. To be thorough, the mediating role of loneliness and the moderating role of gender were examined. Data were collected from 1,447 Chinese adolescents in June 2019 (T1) and January 2020 (T2). The results showed that T1 parental phubbing positively predicted T2 adolescent materialism, and T1 adolescent loneliness positively predicted T2 materialism, whereas neither of the reverse associations held. There were bidirectional relationships between parental phubbing and adolescent loneliness. Loneliness mediated the association between parental phubbing and subsequent adolescent materialism. There were no gender differences in these relationships. These findings enrich the literature by providing the first empirical support for how parental phubbing increases adolescent materialism.