The Relationship Between Risk-Taking Based on Perception of Parenting Styles and Adolescent Alexithymia, With the Meditating Role of Perceived Social Support and the Extent of Social Media Use with Moderating Role of Gender

The occurrence of risky behaviors in Iranian society has turned into a social concern. Additionally, risk-taking affects the health of adolescents negatively and it is suggested that committing risk-taking behaviors at least once during adolescence is associated with the likelihood of other problems and maladjustment in adulthood. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the structural relationship between risk-taking based on parenting styles and Alexithymia in adolescents from the city of Mashhad, with the mediating role of perceived social support and the extent of social media use with the regulating role of gender.

The method of the present study is applied and correlational. The population consisted of all the high school students aged 14-18 in the first, third, and fifth districts of Mashhad, during the second semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The sample consisted of 600 students in ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades selected based on convenience sampling. The data collection for the study included the Iranian Adolescents’ Risk-Taking Scale (Zadeh Mohammadi, 2011), The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Taylor, 1986), The Perception of Parenting Styles Questionnaire (Grolnick et al., 1997), The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support Questionnaire (Zimet et al., 1988), and the Scale of Social Media Use Questionnaire (Hosseini Esfidvadjani, 2021). Data analysis was conducted using path analysis modeling and test of mediating effects in the proposed model with the bootstrap method using SPSS26 and AMOS24 software.

The results of this study indicate that the proposed model fits well with the data. A significant negative relationship can be detected between the perception of parenting styles and perceived social support with risk-taking in both girls and boys. In addition, a significant positive relationship is detected between alexithymia and risk-taking in both girls and boys (P<0.01). Furthermore, the study confirms the mediating role of social support and the extent of social media use in relation to perceiving parenting styles and alexithymia with adolescent risk-taking (p<0.01).

Based on the results of this study, we can state that the variables of perceived social support and the extent of social media use play a mediating role in the relationship between risk-taking and the perception of parenting style and alexithymia in adolescent girls and boys.