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.