Parenting stress and children's problematic media use: An analysis based on the common fate model

In the context of pervasive digital media, this study examined the associations between parenting stress and preschool children's problematic media use, with parental phubbing as a mediator. A two-wave design was employed with 506 preschool children aged 3-6 years (M_age = 55.03 months, SD = 4.31; 45.50% boys) and their parents (father M_age = 36.93 years, SD = 4.80; mother M_age = 35.22 years, SD = 3.84) recruited from seven kindergartens in Shanghai. At Wave 1, both mothers and fathers reported their own parenting stress and phubbing, and at Wave 2, mothers reported children's problematic media use. Structural equation modeling within the common fate framework showed that, at the individual level, maternal and paternal parenting stress were significantly positively associated with their own phubbing but were not significantly associated with children's problematic media use. At the family level, parenting stress was significantly positively associated with both parental phubbing and children's problematic media use. Moreover, parental phubbing played a role in the association between parenting stress and children's problematic media use. These findings suggest that the associations between parenting stress and parental phubbing are primarily systemic, rather than stemming from individual parents, and that family-wide parenting stress and parental phubbing during parent-child interactions may represent important factors in relation to preschoolers' problematic media use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).