Problematic Smartphone Use and Academic Well-Being in Adolescents: Emotion Dysregulation and Metacognitive Self-Regulation in a Cross-Sectional Serial Mediation Model

Background: Problematic smartphone use is associated with poorer student outcomes, but the regulatory processes involved remain unclear, and emotional and metacognitive regulation have rarely been modelled together. Objective: To test whether emotion dysregulation and metacognitive self-regulation statistically account for the association between problematic smartphone use and academic well-being in adolescents, in parallel or in series. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 471 adolescents aged 12–18 (56.1% girls) from İstanbul, enrolled in state or private secondary schools, were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling and completed self-report measures. A latent serial mediation model (10,000 bootstrap resamples) controlled for age, gender, school type, and daily smartphone use, and was re-estimated with the mediator order reversed. Results: Scalar measurement invariance held across gender and school type. Problematic smartphone use was associated with greater emotion dysregulation (β = 0.412), which was associated with lower metacognitive self-regulation (β = −0.281), the strongest correlate of academic well-being (β = 0.386). The total indirect effect (β = −0.200; 68% of the total association) was independent of order, but specific effects were not: the emotion dysregulation pathway was largest when entered first (β = −0.104) and the metacognitive pathway was largest when entered first (β = −0.096). The serial pathway was smallest in both orders. School burnout showed a similar pattern, with reversed signs. Conclusions: The mediators statistically accounted for most of the association, but these cross-sectional data cannot establish their order or which pathway dominates; metacognitive instruction as an independent intervention target is a hypothesis for longitudinal research.