The Impact of Youth Addiction to Media Devices on Violent Behavior: Mediating Effect of Empathy and Moderated Mediating Effect of Gender

The purpose of this study was to determine the moderated mediating effect of gender in the effect of adolescents' media device addiction on violent behavior through empathy.Data from the 14th year of the Korean Children's Panel (PSKC) were used, and 1,301 first-year middle school students were the subjects of this study.Reliability analysis, descriptive statistics, frequency analysis, and correlation analysis were performed using the SPSS Win 24.0 version.The mediating and controlled mediating effects were analyzed using SPSS PROCESS macro 4.2 versions (models 4 and 14).The main findings are as follows.First, the more severe the adolescents' addiction to media devices, the higher their violent behavior, and it was found that the ability to empathize played a mediating role in this relationship.In other words, the more severe the adolescents' addiction to media devices, the lower their ability to empathize, and this lowered ability to empathize increases their violent behavior.Second, the effect of adolescents' addiction to media devices on violent behavior through empathy varies depending on the gender of adolescents, and this controlled mediating effect was significant only in male adolescents.In other words, in the case of male students, the higher the empathy, the sharper the violent behavior decreased.