The shadow of parental phubbing on adolescents’ psychological adjustment: roles of problematic social media use and social support

Abstract Background Parental phubbing— the act of being occupied with a phone, while ignoring and disregarding their children’s in-person interactions —has emerged as an important problem in today’s tech-dominated world, likely being associated with adolescents’ emotional and mental well-being. Therefore, the current study examines the link of perceived parental phubbing with psychological adjustment among adolescents, while discovering the parallel mediating roles of problematic social media use and social support. Methods In this cross-sectional study a total of 429 (53.1% female, 46.9% male) Turkish high school students participated in. The study was conducted using the Brief Psychological Adjustment Scale, the Perceived Parental Phubbing Scale, the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale, and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 25 and the PROCESS macro (Model 4). Results Findings demonstrated that parental phubbing was negatively associated with adolescents’ psychological adjustment. Additionally, the link mediated by problematic social media use underscoring adolescents with higher parental phubbing experiences are more likely to overuse social media in unhealthy and problematic ways which in turn is related to impairing psychological adjustment. Social support also mediated the link and lower social support linked adverse relation of parental phubbing on adjustment. Conclusions These insights underline the necessity of encouraging and fostering conscious tech habits in parents and enhancing adolescents’ social support networks to decrease and prevent negative psychological outcomes.