Problematic media use in children and adolescents has been linked to various mental health concerns. Given the increasing prevalence of media use among German children, it is crucial to have a valid tool to assess problematic media use. The present study validated the 9-item short form of the problematic media use measure (Domoff et al., 2019) in a German sample of N = 240 parents of 4-16-year-old children and explored its relationship with child and parental mental health. Parents completed questionnaires on their child’s problematic media use, psychosocial functioning, their own mental health and media use online. The German version of the PMUM-SF demonstrated high internal consistency, and good convergent and incremental validity. Problematic media use was significantly associated with age and with child functioning such as externalizing and internalizing problems. Furthermore, parental media use and parental stress and depression were positively correlated with child problematic media use. The study thus supports the use of the German version of the PMUM-SF as a measure of problematic media use in children ages 4 through 16 years old.

Description

Title

• Validation of the German Version of the Problematic Media Use Measure (PMUM-short form) and its relation to child and parental mental health

Creator or Contributor

• Name

  Carolin Konrad

  Role

  ProjectLeader

  ORCID

  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3569-0702

  Affiliation

  Ruhr University Bochum

  Name

  Silvia Schneider

  Role

  ProjectMember

  ORCID

  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0698-8411

  Affiliation

  Ruhr University Bochum

  Name

  Sarah Domoff

  Role

  ProjectMember

  ORCID

  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6011-8738

  Affiliation

  University at Albany

Resource type

• Dataset

Keyword

• problematic media use
• parental mediation of media
• externalizing and internalizing behavior
• media addiction
• mental health
• media rules

License

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Description

• Problematic media use in children and adolescents has been linked to various mental health concerns. Given the increasing prevalence of media use among German children, it is crucial to have a valid tool to assess problematic media use. The present study validated the 9-item short form of the problematic media use measure (Domoff et al., 2019) in a German sample of N = 240 parents of 4-16-year-old children and explored its relationship with child and parental mental health. Parents completed questionnaires on their child’s problematic media use, psychosocial functioning, their own mental health and media use online. The German version of the PMUM-SF demonstrated high internal consistency, and good convergent and incremental validity. Problematic media use was significantly associated with age and with child functioning such as externalizing and internalizing problems. Furthermore, parental media use and parental stress and depression were positively correlated with child problematic media use. The study thus supports the use of the German version of the PMUM-SF as a measure of problematic media use in children ages 4 through 16 years old.

Date

• Published

  2025-07-11

Identifier

• DOI

  10.60517/h128nh11s

Publisher

Date created

• 11/07/2025

Last modified

• 2025-07-11