ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Digital Mental Health
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1574502
This article is part of the Research TopicSocial Interaction in Cyberspace: Online Gaming, Social Media, and Mental HealthView all 5 articles
Placing Problematic Media Use in Context: A Research Synthesis, Person-Centric Framework, and Chart Review among a Clinical Sample of US Youth
Provisionally accepted
- 1Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States
- 2Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, United States
- 3University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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Understanding the dynamics underlying problematic media use (PMU) is crucial in today’s digital society. The maintaining factors driving problematic use span both bio-psychological and social factors, necessitating the development of an integrative, meta-theoretical account of PMU to encompass core pathways across established frameworks. The present study used a mixed-methods approach to analyze patient charts (N = 205) from a US clinic specializing in addressing PMU. In doing so, we developed the Person-Context-Process-Outcome-Time (PC-POT) model. PC-POT approaches PMU as a cycle of media-dependent dysfunction, compounding in severity over time, maintained by a set of intrapersonal and interpersonal situational transitions that can affect patient functioning across five key domains. By providing a heuristic structure that more holistically encompasses core determinants and outcomes of PMU, PC-POT helps to provide a more unified basis to advance understanding of PMU in a person- and process-centric way.
Keywords: Gaming disorder, Internet gaming disorder, problematic use of Internet, Problematic social media use, Information Binging, Pornography Use
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Carter, Powell, Bediou, Tsappis, Bickham and Rich. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Michael C. Carter, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States
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