The Serial Multiple Mediating Effects of Social Withdrawal and Smartphone Dependency and the Influence of Negative Parenting Attitude on Adolescents’ Academic Helplessness

This study examined the effects of negative parenting attitudes on adolescents’ academic helplessness through the mediating effects of social withdrawal and smartphone dependency. Data from the panel study of Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey 2018 (KCYPS 2018) collected by the National Youth Policy Institute (NYPI) was used to examine the research model. The subjects of the study consisted of 2,541 first grade middle school students (1,375 boys and 1,166 girls). Confirmatory factor analysis [CFA], structural equation modeling [SEM], and bootstrapping analysis were conducted by means of SPSS 25.0, AMOS 25.0, and Hayes’s PROCESS programs to examine the serial multiple mediating effects. The study results were as follows. First, negative parenting attitude had a direct effect on adolescents’ academic helplessness. This implies that adolescents who perceive their parents’ attitudes to be high in coercive, rejective, and chaotic levels indicate that they can easily get exhausted in academic settings. Second, negative parenting attitudes had an indirect effect on adolescents’ academic helplessness through social withdrawal and smartphone dependency. The results suggest that a high level of negative parenting attitude leads to higher social withdrawal and smartphone dependency that influences adolescents’ academic helplessness.