Parental warmth, rejection, and overprotection in relation to short-video addiction among adolescents via self-management and social anxiety

This cross-sectional study examined the associations of parental emotional warmth and parental rejection/overprotection with short video addiction among 923 junior high school students in China, focusing on the parallel indirect pathways of self-management and social anxiety. Standardized instruments were used to assess parental emotional warmth, parental rejection/overprotection, self-management, social anxiety, and short video addiction. Partial least squares structural equation modeling and bias-corrected bootstrapping were used to estimate the direct and indirect associations. The results showed that parental emotional warmth was negatively associated with short video addiction, whereas parental rejection/overprotection was positively associated with it. Self-management and social anxiety each served as significant indirect pathways. Comparisons of the specific indirect associations further showed that the pathway through social anxiety was stronger than the pathway through self-management for both parental factors. Additional serial model analyses indicated consistent directional patterns, suggesting a supplementary linkage between self-management and social anxiety. 57.5% of the variance in short video addiction was explained by the principal parallel mediation model. Overall, the findings support an interpretation based on the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution model, in which family-related background factors are associated with adolescents' short video addiction through both execution-related regulation and affect-related vulnerability. These results highlight the relevance of emotionally warm family communication, reduced rejection/overprotection, self-management support, and social anxiety-related support in adolescent short-video use contexts.