The serial mediation role of parent-child attachment and empathy in the relationship between parental technoference and social anxiety

The interference in parent-child interactions (i.e., parental technoference) has become an increasingly common type of parental neglect with the recent advancements in technology. Although literature has linked adolescents’ mental health problems to parental neglect, it is still underexplored how parental technoference may be related to adolescents’ social anxiety. Empathy is an ability to share and understand the emotion and perspectives of other individuals. Its two components exhibit distinct associations with social anxiety. This study aims to investigate the psychological mechanism underlying this relationship in the perspective of adolescents’ ability of interpersonal ability, by examining the mediating roles of parent-child attachment and cognitive/affective empathy. A total of 3200 Chinese adolescents participated in the study (grade 10: 643 males, 888 females, mean age = 16.377 years old; grade 11: 715 males, 954 females, mean age = 17.261 years old). The results indicated a positive association between parental technoference and social anxiety. Furthermore, this relationship was found to be mediated by parent-child attachment, while no specific mediating effect was observed for empathy. Additionally, the study revealed a serial mediation role that parent-child attachment and both components of empathy ability were involved. The empathic concern (i.e., affective empathy) displayed positive association with social anxiety, whereas, perspective taking (i.e., cognitive empathy) indicated negative correlation. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of the relationship between parental technoference and adolescents' social anxiety. The findings highlight the importance of parents paying attention to their technology device usage behaviors when interacting with their children.