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Adolescents with hearing impairments may face elevated emotional risks related to personal traits and family environments. Guided by the differential susceptibility model, this study examined how environmental sensitivity was associated with depressive symptoms and whether parental overprotection showed indirect associations in hearing and hearing-impaired adolescents. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with 2008 adolescents (1386 hearing and 622 hearing-impaired; 1006 males and 1002 females; mean age = 15.25 years, SD = 3.97) who completed measures of environmental sensitivity, perceived parental overprotection, and depressive symptoms. Mediation and network analyses were performed separately for the two groups. Results indicated that hearing adolescents reported higher environmental sensitivity, whereas hearing-impaired adolescents reported higher perceived parental overprotection and depressive symptoms. Maternal overprotection showed a significant indirect association between environmental sensitivity and depressive symptoms among hearing adolescents (β = 0.07, p < .001), whereas both paternal and maternal overprotection showed significant indirect associations among hearing-impaired adolescents (βs = 0.08, p < .001). Network analysis further showed distinct item-level network patterns: bridge nodes were distributed across three communities in hearing adolescents, but were primarily concentrated within parental overprotection and depressive symptom items in hearing-impaired adolescents. These findings suggest that parenting processes may be differently related to depressive symptoms in adolescents with and without hearing impairments. They also highlight the potential value of family-centered support tailored to adolescents with hearing impairments.