Relationship Between Parenting Stress and Smartphone Addiction of Mothers with Elementary School Children: Mediating Effect of Emotional Dysregulation

Objectives This study was analyzed the mediating effect of parenting stress among mothers of elementary school children on smartphone addiction through emotional dysregulation. Methods The subjects of this study were the 13th year (2020) data of the Korean Children's Panel provided by the Childcare Policy Research Institute, and conducted an analysis targeting 302 boys and 288 girls and their mothers. The collected data were analyzed for mediation effects by applying the SPSS 22.0 program and SPSS PROCESS Macro v4.1 model4 developed and distributed by Hayes (2017). Results First, a statistically significant correlation was found between the variables of mother's parenting stress, emotional dysregulation, and smartphone addiction. Second, emotional dysregulation was found to have a significant mediating effect in the relationship between mothers' parenting stress and smartphone addiction. Conclusions The mediating effect of mother's parenting stress on smartphone addiction through emotional dysregulation was identified, and when approaching the problem of mother's smartphone addiction, it was possible to intervene by considering psychological and emotional aspects such as parenting stress and emotional dysregulation. The significance is that the direction was presented to enable this to happen.