Longitudinal Reciprocal Relationships among Adolescents' Academic Helplessness, Smartphone Dependency, and Perceived Negative Parenting: An Application of the Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Model

This study examined the longitudinal relationships among academic helplessness, smartphone dependency, and negative parenting attitudes in adolescents. Using data from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey (KCYPS) for first-year middle school students from Wave 1 (2018) to Wave 3 (2020), an autoregressive cross-lagged model was employed. The results revealed significant autoregressive effects for all three variables across time, indicating temporal stability. Furthermore, a significant cross-lagged effect was found between smartphone dependency and negative parenting attitudes, suggesting a reciprocal causal relationship. In contrast, no significant cross-lagged effects were observed between academic helplessness and the other two variables. These findings demonstrate that parent-adolescent relationships are not fixed or unidirectional but rather evolve reciprocally over time. This study underscores the importance of considering the mutual influences between parental attitudes and adolescent behaviors in the design of parent education and school counseling programs.