ArticleHuman behavior and emerging technologies2020
Interactional theory of childhood problematic media use.
Article in Human behavior and emerging technologies, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 81 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
81 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Interventions to Reduce Screen Time in Preschool-Aged Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2026Pooled it
- Parental Technoference and Child Problematic Media Use: Meta-Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Preventive Interventions for Internet Addiction in Young Children: Systematic Review.JMIR mental health · 2024Pooled it
- Problematic Media Use among Children up to the Age of 10: A Systematic Literature Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Modernizing behavioral parent training program for ADHD with mHealth strategies, telehealth groups, and health behavior curriculum: a randomized pilot trial.Journal of pediatric psychology · 2024Trial
- "I've let screens take over": Maternal Guilt About Media and Relations to Children's Problematic Media Use.Computers in human behavior · 2027Article
- Does exposure to potentially traumatic events moderate the longitudinal relationship between mental health and problematic media use? Moderated multiple mediation analyses within the ABCD study.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2026Observational
- The relationship between problematic media use and their fear, anxiety and behavior during dental treatment in children.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Predictors of Problematic Internet Use Among Gifted Children: The Role of Health Literacy and Health-Promoting Lifestyle Beliefs.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Problematic Use of Electronic Devices in Preschool Children: A Parent Coaching Program for the Prevention of Screen Addiction.Child psychiatry and human development · 2026Article
- The Relationship Between Parental Smartphone Addiction and Child Problematic Media Use: Mediating Roles of Child-Parent Conflict and Parental Psychological Distress and Validation of the Child-Parent Relationship Scale-Short Form in Arabic.Public health challenges · 2026Article
- Parental psychological control and problematic smartphone use in Chinese early adolescents: shyness as a mediator and teacher-student relationship as a moderator.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Internet Use Scale for Emotional Distress Avoidance in Adolescents (IU-EDA): Development, Psychometric Validation, and Predictive Validity of Problematic Internet Use.Journal of prevention (2022) · 2026Article
- How Perceived Parental Technoference Relates to Adolescent Smartphone Addiction: Evidence from a Moderated Mediation Model.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A bibliometric analysis of research on child development and digital addiction.Discover mental health · 2026Article
- Maternal Screen-Related Behaviors, Toddler Screen Use, and Toddler BMI in Mexican American Families: Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR pediatrics and parenting · 2026Article
- Digital Ecosystems, Children, and Adolescents: Technical Report.Pediatrics · 2026Review
- Development and Validation of the Parental Media Motivations (MEMO) Scales for Child and Parent Media Use in the United States.Journal of children and media · 2026Article
- Research on the relationship between parents' media literacy and preschoolers' learning quality: the mediating role of preschoolers' electronic device use.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The inner logic of digital anxiety: a Self-Determination Theory perspective on the motivational transformation of Fear of Missing Out.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
21 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The growth of mobile device access and ownership has yielded many opportunities and challenges for raising healthy digital media consumers. As adoption of mobile and internet-connected devices has increased among children, concerns for healthy child development have been expressed regarding excessive or problematic use. Although much theoretical and empirical work has been conducted evaluating adolescents' and adults' risks for dependence on various screen media (e.g., Gaming Disorder, Internet Addiction), little theoretical consideration has been expounded regarding the etiology and maintenance of problematic media use earlier in childhood (i.e., under age 12 years). The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework through which to investigate problematic media use in early childhood. Our theory, the Interactional Theory of Childhood Problematic Media Use (IT-CPU) merges developmental and clinical psychology theories, with communication and human-computer interaction perspectives. We outline distal and proximal factors that we hypothesize contribute to the development of problematic media use in childhood, and emphasize maintaining factors that could be targets for intervention. Finally, we provide recommendations for an interdisciplinary research agenda to test our proposed theory and inform experimental trials to prevent and treat childhood problematic media use.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.