The purpose of this study is to examine whether social withdrawal mediates the relationship between attention problems and cyber delinquency, and whether parental structured guidance moderates this mediating pathway. This study utilized data from the ...
The purpose of this study is to examine whether social withdrawal mediates the relationship between attention problems and cyber delinquency, and whether parental structured guidance moderates this mediating pathway. This study utilized data from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey 2018 conducted by the National Youth Policy Institute. To secure temporal ordering, attention problems were measured in the fifth wave, social withdrawal and parental structured guidance in the sixth wave, and cyber delinquency in the seventh wave. A total of 1,975 respondents were included in the final analysis. The data were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and the SPSS PROCESS macro. Mediation, moderation, and moderated mediation effects were examined through PROCESS Models 4, 1, and 14, respectively. Since cyber delinquency was measured as a binary variable, logistic regression analysis was applied.
The findings are as follows: First, attention problems had a significant positive effect on social withdrawal and a significant direct effect on cyber delinquency. However, social withdrawal did not significantly mediate the relationship between attention problems and cyber delinquency in the simple mediation model. This result indicates that attention problems are directly associated with cyber delinquency, but the indirect pathway through social withdrawal does not appear uniformly across all adolescents.
Next, a moderation analysis showed that the interaction between social withdrawal and parental structured guidance was statistically significant. Specifically, social withdrawal significantly increased the likelihood of cyber delinquency when parental provision of structure was low. However, this effect was not significant when parental provision of structure was at the average or high level. This finding suggests that parental provision of structure may function as a protective condition that weakens the risk pathway from social withdrawal to cyber delinquency.
In Step 3, the moderated mediating effect of parental provision of structure was examined. The index of moderated mediation was statistically significant. The conditional indirect effect of attention problems on cyber delinquency through social withdrawal was significant only when parental provision of structure was low, whereas it was not significant at average or high levels. In other words, attention problems increased social withdrawal, and social withdrawal increased the likelihood of cyber delinquency only under conditions of low parental provision of structure.
These findings suggest that cyber delinquency should not be understood simply as an online behavioral problem, but as a developmental outcome shaped by individual vulnerabilities, socio-emotional adjustment, and family environmental factors. In particular, adolescents with attention problems may be more vulnerable to social withdrawal and cyber delinquency when they lack clear guidance, explanations, rules, and problem-solving support from parents. Therefore, preventive interventions for cyber delinquency should identify adolescents with attention-related vulnerabilities at an early stage, support their social and emotional adjustment, and strengthen parental provision of structure. This study provides practical implications for developing family-based and school-based prevention strategies to reduce cyber delinquency among adolescents and young adults.