ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Addictive Behaviors
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1517222
The influence of difficult child temperament and parenting stress on parental problematic smartphone use in early childhood: A moderated mediation analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, School of Applied Psychology, Zurich, Switzerland
- 2ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, School of Health Sciences, Winterthur, Switzerland
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Smartphone use has become an integral part of daily life and is also common among parents of young children. As parental problematic smartphone use can impact parents' and children's well-being, it is important to examine the determinants of this issue. This study examined the association between difficult temperament in toddlers, parenting stress, and parental problematic smartphone use. Results of a moderated mediation analysis utilizing data from 261 mothers and fathers of 14-month-old children showed that parenting stress fully mediated the association between difficult child temperament and parental problematic smartphone use. Parental gender did not moderate the association between parenting stress and problematic smartphone use. Parents who rated their child's temperament as more difficult reported more parenting stress, which in turn led to higher levels of problematic smartphone use. Parenting stress is thus an important determinant of parental problematic smartphone use. Further research on stress management and parental smartphone use is needed to develop targeted interventions that promote the well-being of parents and children.Parental smartphone use should be considered holistically by taking various influencing factors and their interplay into account rather than examining them in isolation.
Keywords: Parental smartphone use, Problematic smartphone use, Difficult child temperament, parenting stress, Early Childhood
Received: 25 Oct 2024; Accepted: 05 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schneebeli, Braune-Krickau, Joliat and Von Wyl. 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: Larissa Schneebeli, ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, School of Applied Psychology, Zurich, Switzerland
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.