Parental Expectation and Mobile Phone Addiction in Adolescents from Chinese Low-Income Families: The Mediating Effects of Self-Esteem and Social Anxiety

The parental expectation in adolescents' education is an essential factor of adolescents' social and emotional development. However, little is known about how it is related to adolescents' mobile phone addiction, especially for adolescents from low-income families. To address this issue, this study investigated the relationship between parental expectation and mobile phone addiction, and its underlying mechanisms in adolescents from low-income families. We hypothesized that parental expectation would negatively predict mobile phone addiction, and self-esteem and social anxiety would play multiple mediation roles in this relationship. Results from a sample of 1,953 Chinese adolescents in low-income families revealed that (a) parental expectation was negatively associated with adolescents' mobile phone addiction, (b) both social anxiety and self-esteem played partial and parallel mediating roles between parental expectation and mobile phone addiction, and (c) social anxiety and self-esteem mediated the association between parental expectation and mobile phone addiction sequentially. This study would advance our understanding of how proper parenting styles and social networks helped to prevent children's mobile phone addiction. The limitations and implications of this study are discussed.