The impact of excessive screen use on child health and development is now a public health concern, and research efforts are focused on finding ways to moderate screen use. To date, the focus has mainly been on school-aged children and adolescents, and the early childhood context has been comparatively neglected. Moreover, relationships between factors likely to influence screen use by young children (e.g., child behaviour, parenting style and self-efficacy) remain largely unexplored. Our study aimed to test relationships between parenting style, parents’ self-efficacy, parental distress, child behaviour, and young children’s screen time. We used a cross-sectional study design. Parents (N = 106) of young children (aged 0–4 years) living in Australia completed an online survey which assessed parent-reported child screen use, screen time-related child behaviour problems, parents’ self-efficacy for managing child behaviour and screen time, parents’ beliefs about the positive/negative effects of screen time, parenting style, general child adjustment and parent efficacy, and parent distress. Correlation coefficients revealed relationships between dysfunctional parenting styles, screen time-related child behaviour problems, and parent self-efficacy for dealing with these behaviours. Using hierarchical multiple regression models, children’s screen time behaviour problems explained the greatest variance in parents’ self-efficacy for managing screen time, and parents’ self-efficacy for managing child screen time explained the greatest variance in parent-reported child screen time. Further research is needed to disentangle these relationships; however, preliminary results suggest that child behaviour difficulties and parents’ self-efficacy warrant further investigation as potentially useful targets for interventions aiming to improve screen use in early childhood.

现在，过度使用屏幕对儿童健康和发展的影响已成为公共健康问题，研究工作集中在寻找适度使用屏幕的方法。迄今为止，重点主要放在学龄儿童和青少年上，而相对而言，幼儿期的情况则被忽略了。此外，可能影响幼儿使用屏幕的因素之间的关系（例如，儿童的行为，养育方式和自我效能感）之间的关系仍未得到充分探索。我们的研究旨在检验父母的养育方式，父母的自我效能感，父母的困扰，孩子的行为以及幼儿的放映时间之间的关系。我们使用了横断面研究设计。父母（ñ = 106）居住在澳大利亚的幼儿（0至4岁）完成了一项在线调查，该调查评估了父母报告的儿童屏幕使用情况，与屏幕时间有关的儿童行为问题，父母对儿童行为和屏幕时间的自我管理能力，父母对屏幕时间的正面/负面影响，父母教养方式，一般的孩子适应和父母效能以及父母苦恼的信念。相关系数揭示了功能障碍的父母教养方式，与屏幕时间相关的儿童行为问题以及父母应对这些行为的自我效能之间的关系。通过使用分层多元回归模型，孩子们的屏幕时间行为问题解释了父母在管理屏幕时间的自我效能方面的最大差异，父母管理孩子的屏幕时间的自我效能解释了父母报告的孩子的屏幕时间的最大差异。需要进一步研究以消除这些关系；然而，初步结果表明，儿童行为障碍和父母的自我效能感值得进一步调查，作为旨在改善儿童早期筛查使用的干预措施的潜在有用目标。