ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1521013
Parenting Attitudes and Pathological Gaming: Multifaceted Influences of Harsh-Negative Parenting on Adolescent Pathological Gaming
Provisionally accepted
- Konkuk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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As adolescent pathological gaming is increasingly recognized as a societal issue, previous research has aimed to identify the effects of family-related factors (e.g., parenting attitudes, parent-child relationship, etc.) and adolescents' psychosocial factors (e.g., social skills, aggression, etc.). However, few studies have examined the associations among family-related factors, psychosocial factors, and pathological gaming simultaneously within a longitudinal research basis. Method This study analyzed three years of longitudinal data collected from 968 adolescent gamers (M=477, F=491) in South Korea. A PLS-SEM method was employed using SmartPLS version 4 to reveal potential associations among parenting attitudes (harsh-negative parenting), psychosocial factors (social intelligence, aggression), and the degree of pathological gaming within a structural equation model.The results indicate that harsh-negative parenting strongly influences social intelligence and aggression, potentially leading to pathological gaming. Specifically, harsh-negative parenting decreased the degree of social intelligence but also increased aggression. Social intelligence, in turn, was associated with a decrease in pathological gaming, while aggression was linked to an increase in pathological gaming. Discussion These findings underscore the critical role and mechanism of parenting attitudes, which may influence adolescents' pathological gaming through impacts on social intelligence and aggression. Adolescents' psychological and social factors can be strongly affected by parents' negative attitudes. In the context of preventing adolescent pathological gaming, more focus on policies or education aimed at parenting attitudes should be considered.
Keywords: Pathological gaming, Parenting attitude, harsh-negative parenting, social intelligence, adolescent gamer, Aggression
Received: 04 Nov 2024; Accepted: 21 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Choi, Kim, Kim and Jeong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Eui Jun Jeong, Konkuk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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