engleski

Can I use it? No! - Parental mediation, the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship, and conflicts about adolescents’ smartphone use

Adolescents use smartphones every day, and usually, they use them when they want and need them. Parents do not like it and try to control adolescents' use of smartphones. The process of monitoring and restricting adolescents' smartphone use is quite challenging for both adolescents and parents. And, for some parents and adolescents, conflicts are inevitable. Thus, the aim of this study was to examine the relationships between parental permissiveness, parental mediation, the quality of the adolescent-parent relationship, and conflicts about smartphone use between adolescents and parents. The sample includes 283 Croatian adolescents who attend higher grades of primary school and who, along with one of their parents, participated in the research project "Digital technology in the family: patterns of behavior and effects on child development." The data comes from the first wave of a longitudinal study on the use of smartphones among Croatian adolescents. Adolescents completed the Parental Permissiveness Subscale of the Parental Behavior Questionnaire (Keresteš et al., 2012) and the Parent-Adolescent Relationship Scale (Hair et al., 2005). Based on the qualitative study with adolescents and parents in the project, we developed a new scale for measuring conflicts about adolescents’ smartphone use between adolescents and parents and a new scale for measuring parental mediation strategies. Adolescents also completed these new scales. The results indicate the good psychometric properties of the newly developed scales. The preliminary results indicate conflicts about adolescents’ smartphone use between parents and adolescents are more frequently present among adolescents whose parents lack control over their children's smartphone use and use restrictive mediation. Furthermore, adolescents who have a lower quality of relationship with their parents are more likely to argue more with them about smartphone use. The findings of the study are discussed, considering the importance of parental behavior, especially parental mediation, for regulation of early adolescents’ smartphone use and lowering conflicts between parents and adolescents about smartphone use.

conflicts, smartphone use, adolescents, parental mediation, permissiveness, adolescent - parent relationship

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