The more middle school students are dissatisfied with their guardians' parenting, the more they rely on cell phones, leading to low independent studying ability, a report showed Tuesday.

According to the report by a research team led by professor Yi Soon-hyung of Seoul National University, students who thought their parents showed inconsistency, excessive expectations and over-involvement in parenting turned out to rely more on cell phones.

The research was based on the track records of 1,953 students from their first grade in middle school through their third year.

The correlation between mobile phone dependency and excessive expectations was the highest at 0.15, according to the report, meaning excessive expectations are the most detrimental factor leading to students' dependency on cell phones. 

The correlation between dependency and over-involvement and inconsistency were 0.07 and 0.06, respectively.

The report also said students with higher cell phone dependency have a lower self-regulated learning ability.

The value of achievement, purpose orientation, behavior control ability and ability to manage studying time all had a negative correlation with dependency on cell phones.

Behavior control ability led the list with -0.29, followed by value of achievement at -0.17 and purpose orientation and time management at -0.12 and -0.06 each, according to the report. 

Female students relied more on mobile phones than male students in general, the data showed.

Out of 28, the score for dependency on cell phones increased from 13.22 to 15.20 and 15.94 for male students from first grade to the latter years, whereas that of females on average reached 15.54 in the first year.

The score for female students increased to 17.18 and 17.83 in the following years, according to the report. 

"The cell phone has become an essential medium for adolescents' life in middle school," the research team said. "The result implies that a positive parenting method is necessary to increase teenagers' ability to study independently in addition to students' efforts." (Yonhap)