DOI: 10.30565/medalanya.1937014 ISSN: 2587-0319

Phubbing in Adolescents with Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Associations with Coping Strategies and Maternal Emotional Functioning

Müge Mutlu, Celal Yeşilkaya
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Aim: Phubbing, defined as ignoring others by focusing on a smartphone during face-to-face interactions, has become increasingly common among adolescents in recent years. However, its relationship with anxiety in patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) remains unclear. This study examined the associations between adolescent anxiety, coping strategies, phubbing behavior, and maternal emotional functioning, and tested whether avoidant and negative coping strategies mediate the anxiety–phubbing relationship.Methods: A total of 136 adolescents with GAD (61.0% female; mean age = 14.3 ± 1.8 years) and their mothers were recruited from a child and adolescent psychiatry outpatient clinic. Diagnoses were established using the K-SADS. Adolescents completed measures assessing anxiety levels, phubbing and coping skills, while mothers completed measures assessing alexithymia and emotion regulation strategies. A parallel mediation model (PROCESS macro; 5,000 bootstrap samples) was used to examine the indirect effects.Results: Adolescent anxiety was positively associated with phubbing (r = 0.308, p < 0.001). Maternal alexithymia and emotion dysregulation showed largely non-significant associations with adolescent outcomes; only maternal difficulty in identifying feelings was weakly associated with adolescent anxiety (r = 0.200, p = 0.020). Mediation analysis indicated that avoidant and negative coping strategies jointly mediated the association between anxiety and phubbing (total indirect effect = 0.118, 95% CI [0.02, 0.24]). However, anxiety also had a significant direct effect on phubbing. The overall model explained 13.4% of the variance in phubbing.Conclusion: These findings suggest that interventions targeting avoidance-based coping strategies may help reduce phubbing and its interpersonal consequences among anxious adolescents.

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