BACKGROUND: Mobile phone dependence and mental health problems have become increasingly prominent among left-behind adolescents in China. In recent years, some studies have focused on the important role of parent-child relationship and psychological resilience. Therefore, this study aims to explore the multidimensional relationships among resilience, mental health, and mobile phone dependence among left-behind adolescents, and to assess the impact of parent-child conflict level on these relationships. METHODS: The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-18), the Chinese version of the Mobile Phone Addiction Index (MPAI), the Resilience Scale for Children and Adolescents (RSCA), and the Parent-Child Conflict Scale were used to investigate 2,100 left-behind adolescents in Sichuan Province, and R was run to make network analysis and network comparison. RESULTS: (1) A structurally stable network relationship exists between left-behind adolescents' resilience, mental health, and mobile phone dependence
(2) BSI3 (Anxiety) is the most important node of the network model, followed by MPAI1 (the inability to control cravings subscale)
(3) MPAI1 (the inability to control cravings subscale) and RSCA4 (family support) are key to connect resilience, mental health, and smartphone addiction in the study sample
(4) There was a significant difference in the network structure between the high- and low-level groups of parent-child conflict, no significant difference in the global strength of the network, and a significant difference in the centrality of strength and the centrality of bridge strength. CONCLUSIONS: Chinese left-behind adolescents' resilience and mental health, mobile phone dependence are both independent and interact with each other to some extent. Specifically, high centrality dimensions such as anxiety, the inability to control cravings, and family support can be prioritised for intervention in related treatments, or reducing parent-child conflict and enhancing resilience to mitigate mobile phone dependence among left-behind adolescents, thus improving their mental health.