Bidirectional Associations between Male and Female Adolescents’ Mobile Phone Dependency and Self-Esteem
AUTHOR : 홍예지,이순형
INFORMATION : page. 221~241 / 2016 Vol.23 No.3
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to examine the bidirectional relationship between mobile phone dependency
(MPD) and self-esteem (SE) of South Korean male and female adolescents in the seventh, ninth, and
eleventh grades, while accounting for gender differences. The study used panel data from the Korean
Children and Youth Panel Study (KCYPS), and three waves of data from 2,327 adolescents were analyzed
by means of autoregressive cross-lagged modeling. The results can be summarized as follows. First, MPD
and SE were consistently stable for adolescents in the seventh, ninth, and eleventh grades. Second, there
was a significant influence of adolescents’ high level of SE on the subsequent low level of MPD. However,
there was no significant influence of their high level of MPD on the subsequent low level of SE across
time. According to the multi-group analysis, no gender differences were found in the relationship between
the two constructs during the study period. These findings suggest that special efforts of enhancing
adolescents’ levels of self-esteem are definitely necessary in order to prevent their high levels of mobile
phone dependency. Based on the results, implications were also discussed.