An examination of problematic screen use in children aged 4-6 in terms of parental stress and well-being levels

This study aimed to examine the relationships between problematic screen use in children aged 4-6 and various factors such as parental age, parental education level, parental daily working hours, parental screen time, child gender, children's screen time, children's purpose for screen use, parental stress, and parental psychological well-being. The study sample consisted of 318 parents (15 men and 303 women) with children aged 4-6 from two provinces in the Western Black Sea and Central Anatolia regions in 2023. To collect data, a "Personal Information Form" prepared by the researchers was used to gather demographic information of the children and parents, the "Problematic Media Use: Screen Addiction Scale" was employed to measure children's problematic screen use, the "Parental Stress Scale" to assess parental stress levels, and the "Psychological Well-being Scale" to measure parental psychological well-being. Ethical approval was obtained from the Kırşehir Ahi Evran University Ethics Committee for the study. The research was conducted online with 318 parents, using scales for data collection, and the analysis was performed using IBM SPSS 27 software. Regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between problematic screen use in children aged 4-6 and parental stress and psychological well-being. Correlation analysis was employed to assess the relationship between problematic screen use in children aged 4-6 and parental stress. Variance analysis (ANOVA) was used to examine the relationship between problematic screen use in children aged 4-6 and variables such as parental education level, parental daily working hours, parental daily screen time, children's daily screen time, and children's purpose for screen use. Lastly, the t-test was utilized to assess the relationship between problematic screen use in children aged 4-6 and child gender. The analyses revealed that parental stress and psychological well-being significantly predicted problematic screen use in children aged 4-6. Significant differences were found regarding problematic screen use in children aged 4-6 concerning parental age, daily working hours, daily screen time, child gender, children's screen time, and children's purpose for screen use. However, no significant differences were found between problematic screen use in children and parental education level.