The Boundary Conditions Under Which Parental Marital Quality Leads to Adolescents’ Social Media Addiction

Abstract

A questionnaire survey was conducted among 908 middle school students to explore the boundary conditions under which parental marital quality influences adolescents’ social media addiction. The results showed that (1) parental marital quality negatively predicted adolescents’ social media addiction; (2) interpersonal sensitivity moderated the relationship between adolescents’ parental marital quality and social media addiction; and (3) peer relationships moderated the relationship between adolescents’ parental marital quality and social media addiction. These findings help to deepen the understanding of the boundary conditions under which parental marital quality leads to adolescents’ social media addiction and have implications for intervention in Internet addiction.

Keywords:

• Adolescents
• interpersonal sensitivity
• parental marital quality
• peer relationships
• social media addiction

Acknowledgments

The author would like to extend his sincere gratitude to Xu Li for her instructive advice and useful comments on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.