ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Addictive Behaviors
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1555900
Parenting styles and internet addiction in college students: self-esteem and self-control as mediators
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
- 2Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, United States
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Objectives: This study aimed to explore the effect of parental rearing styles on internet addiction among college students, specifically assessing the mediating roles of self-esteem and self-control in the influencing path.: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted among college students in a city in eastern China in 2022. Chained mediation effect tests, employing Model 6 of PROCESS with SPSS (27.0), were utilized to statistically analyze the pathways of factors such as parenting styles, self-esteem, and self-control that influence Internet addiction. Results: Positive parenting styles served as protective factors against internet addiction, whereas negative parenting styles constituted potential risk factors. Self-esteem and selfcontrol fully mediated the association between positive parenting styles and internet addiction. Conversely, they partially mediated the relationship between negative parenting styles and internet addiction. Conclusions: Interventions should attach importance to improving positive parenting styles and reducing negative parenting styles, and aim to cultivate self-esteem and strengthen selfcontrol, which are essential to effectively address internet addiction in college students.
Keywords: parenting styles, Internet addiction, Self-Control, self-esteem, college students
Received: 09 Jan 2025; Accepted: 08 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gui, Zhao and Mao. 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: Qun Zhao, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
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