Parenting stress and young children’s problematic media use: the serial mediating roles of parental phubbing and parent–child conflict

Background: Excessive screen media use among young children has become a growing public health concern. This study aimed to examine a sequential pathway in which parenting stress influences young children's problematic media use (PMU) by first increasing parental phubbing, which then exacerbates parent-child conflict. Methods: This study employed a multi-wave design. Data were collected via an online questionnaire survey from 925 parents of children aged 3-6 years in Guangdong Province, China. Participants completed the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF), the Generic Scale of Phubbing (GSP), the Parent-Child Conflict Scale (PCC), and the Children's Problematic Media Use Questionnaire (CEMUQ). The mediation analysis was conducted using Hayes's PROCESS macro (Model 6) with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Results: Parenting stress was significantly positively associated with children's PMU. This relationship was independently mediated by both parental phubbing and parent-child conflict. More importantly, a significant serial mediation path was confirmed: parenting stress increased parental phubbing, which in turn heightened parent-child conflict, ultimately leading to higher levels of PMU. Conclusion: This study confirms that parenting stress affects young children's PMU by increasing parental phubbing, which subsequently aggravates parent-child conflict. These findings suggest that effective intervention requires a dual focus on alleviating parenting stress and improving parent-child interaction quality.