With the deep penetration of internet technology, mobile phone addiction has emerged as a global public health challenge, profoundly impacting college students who are digital natives. In China, the staggering number of 1.105 billion mobile internet users (China Internet Network Information Center, 2025) underscores the urgency of this issue. Compared to other demographics, college students face unique pressures from academic competition, career prospects, and social adaptation. They enjoy considerable autonomy over their time, yet experience diminished external behavioral constraints, making them a high-risk group for mobile phone addiction. Investigating the psychosocial mechanisms underlying this addiction is therefore crucial for fostering their personal development and the nation's future talent pool.

Parenting, a key environmental factor in individual development, continues to exert influence during the transition to young adulthood in college. Research framed by Self-Determination Theory posits that parenting shapes behavior by satisfying or thwarting three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2012). Specifically, parental autonomy support, which involves encouraging independent choice and self-expression, is widely regarded as a protective factor that fulfills autonomy needs and enhances intrinsic motivation, with studies showing it reduces internet addiction risk (Liu et al., 2021). Conversely, parental psychological control, which intrudes into a child’s psychological world via guilt induction or love withdrawal, and it is consistently linked to higher adolescent mobile phone addiction (Yan et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2025), likely by thwarting autonomy and inducing reactance (Barber, 1996). Parental behavioral control, however, which is typically understood as a process of establishing rules and monitoring behavior, shows a negative association with problematic internet use (Li et al., 2013).

Nevertheless, existing studies often examine single parenting dimensions in isolation, overlooking their synergistic effects and combined patterns in real-world families. Person-centered approaches like Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) offer a novel perspective. For instance, one study focusing on physical education teachers identified profiles such as High Autonomy Support-Low Psychological Control among adolescents (Soenens, Vansteenkiste, & Sierens, 2007). Although  scholars have begun exploring the joint effects of autonomy support and psychological control (Costa et al., 2016; Deng et al., 2021), research integrating autonomy support, psychological control, and behavioral control to uncover holistic parenting profiles among university students remains scarce. Critically, the perceived stress experienced by college students may serve as a key boundary condition. High stress may increase the propensity to use mobile phones as an escape from reality. Thus, stress could amplify the association between maladaptive parenting profiles and mobile phone addiction.

In summary, integrating SDT and a stress-coping perspective, this study innovatively employs LPA to:

1) Identify latent parenting profiles based on parental autonomy support, psychological control, and behavioral control among Chinese university students;

2) Compare differences in mobile phone addiction levels across these profiles;

3) Test whether perceived stress moderates the aforementioned relationship.

The findings are expected to move beyond examining isolated variables, offering a holistic perspective and providing crucial evidence for developing targeted prevention and intervention strategies for at-risk students from diverse familial backgrounds.

1. Participants and Sampling Procedure The target population comprises undergraduate and postgraduate students in China. A stratified random probability sampling method will be employed to ensure representativeness. Strata will be defined based on university type, geographical region, and institutional tier. Data will be collected via an online survey platform, targeting a minimum of 500 valid responses. 2. Measures Standardized scales will be administered. Parenting styles will be assessed using a three-dimension scale (Wang et al., 2007)., measuring parental autonomy support (12 items), psychological control (18 items), and behavioral control (16 items) on a 5-point Likert scale. Mobile phone addiction will be measured with the Chinese version of the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (Xiang et al., 2019), containing 10 items (6-point Likert). Perceived stress will be evaluated using the Simplified Chinese Perceived Stress Scale (Lu et al., 2017), a 10-item scale. Demographic covariates including gender, grade, major, and family socioeconomic status will be collected. 3. Data Collection and Ethics The study protocol will be submitted for ethical approval to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University prior to data collection. All participants will be provided with informed consent after they registered for the study. Anonymity and confidentiality will be strictly maintained, and participants retain the right to withdraw. Volunteers will be invited to submit a screenshot of their smartphone screen time report to supplement self-reported data. 4. Data Analysis Plan Data will be analyzed using SPSS 27.0 and Mplus 8.3. After data cleaning and tests for common method bias, a three-step analytic strategy will be implemented. First, SPSS software will be used to conduct descriptive statistics, correlation analyses, and standardization procedures. Second, a robust bootstrap latent profile analysis will be performed in Mplus on the standardized scores of parental autonomy support and control dimensions to explore the potential latent categories of parenting styles. Third, the PROCESS macro in SPSS will be employed again to examine the moderating effect of college students' stress on the relationship between parenting profile types and mobile phone addiction.

1.Identification of Latent Parenting Profiles Based on the three dimensions of parental autonomy support, psychological control, and behavioral control, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) is anticipated to identify 4-5 typical parenting profile types within the college student sample. Potential profiles may include: a High Autonomy Support-Low Psychological Control-Moderate Behavioral Control profile (i.e., Supportive Authoritative profile), a Low Autonomy Support-High Psychological Control-Low Behavioral Control profile (Psychologically Controlling-dominant profile), a Low Autonomy Support-Low Psychological Control-Low Behavioral Control profile (Neglectful profile), a Low Autonomy Support-High Psychological Control-High Behavioral Control profile (Strictly Controlling profile), and potentially a Moderate Autonomy Support-Low Psychological Control-Moderate Behavioral Control profile (Balanced Adaptive profile). 2.Association Between Different Parenting Profiles and College Students' Mobile Phone Addiction Significant differences in mobile phone addiction levels are expected among students from different parenting profiles. We hypothesize that the High Autonomy Support-Low Psychological Control-Moderate Behavioral Control profile is associated with the lowest addiction level, while the Low Autonomy Support-High Psychological Control-Low Behavioral Control profile is associated with the highest addiction level. The Strictly Controlling and Neglectful profiles are expected to show intermediate levels of addiction. 3.Moderating Role of perceived stress Perceived stress is hypothesized to significantly moderate the relationship between parenting profiles and mobile phone addiction. For students in riskier profiles (e.g., Low Autonomy Support/High Psychological Control), high stress levels are expected to amplify the risk of addiction. In contrast, for students in more adaptive profiles (e.g., High Autonomy Support/Low Psychological Control), the association between profile and addiction is expected to remain weak regardless of stress level.

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