Relationships Among Parental Phubbing and Children's Emotion Regulation Skills and Psychosocial Behavioral Symptoms.

Abstract

Purpose: To determine relationships among parental phubbing and children's emotion regulation skills and psychosocial behavioral symptoms.

Method: This descriptive and correlational study was conducted with 634 parents of children aged 11 to 14 years. A Parent-Child Descriptive Information Form, the Generic Phubbing Scale (GSP), Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 (PSC-17), and Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC) were used for data collection.

Results: There was a statistically significant positive and weak correlation between parents' GSP scores and children's PSC-17 scores (r = 0.191; p < 0.001), and a statistically significant positive and weak correlation between emotion dysregulation scores (r = 0.221; p < 0.001). The effect of GSP scores on PSC-17 scores was statistically significant (t = 4.882; p < 0.001). The impact of GSP scores on emotion dysregulation scores was also statistically significant (t = 5.689; p < 0.001).

Conclusion: Parental phubbing was found to impact children's psychosocial and emotional states. It is recommended that the negative effects of parental phubbing be addressed by child health care workers in the context of child-parent relationships in the family where the behavior is exhibited and awareness should be raised about this concept.