Digital Screen Time and Mental Health Difficulties Among Preschool Children in Western China: Cross-Sectional Study.
In preschoolers, each extra hour of screen time under ~70 min/day raised odds of mental health difficulties
Digital Screen Time and Mental Health Difficulties Among Preschool Children in Western China: Cross-Sectional Study.
With rising digital media use among young children, concerns have grown regarding its impact on early socioemotional development.
The study aimed to explore the nonlinear association between screen time and mental health outcomes in preschool children, identify a potential threshold, and examine the indirect statistical association of parental discipline in this relationship.
Were recruited through stratified cluster sampling from 189 public kindergartens across 13 districts between February 28 and March 5, 2025.
each added hour under the threshold raised odds of difficulties by 65%
A significant nonlinear association was found, with a saturating dose-response pattern.
A 2-piecewise logistic regression reparameterization yielded a policy-interpretable summary of approximately 70 minutes per day (95% CI 66-75) for elevated clinical risk.
However, the smooth generalized additive models fit marginally better (ΔAkaike information criterion=-6.78), indicating that the association is better characterized as a graded, saturating pattern rather than a sharply defined break point.
Daily digital screen time shows a nonlinear association with preschool children's mental health outcomes.
Reducing weekday screen exposure and optimizing parental discipline represent promising intervention targets, based on cross-sectionally derived correlational mediation patterns.
These findings offer locally relevant, evidence-based benchmarks for screen-time guidance and highlight modifiable parenting factors for early childhood digital health interventions.