Original title: Effectiveness of the digital parental-family-centered program for problematic gaming and screen use in a clinical child and adolescent population
Emma Claesdotter-Knutsson, Sophie Wilts, Marie Werner, Frida André +1 · August 2026
Too much gaming and screen time can cause social, school, and mental health struggles for children. To address this, researchers developed a digital training program called P-FAME. Instead of treating kids directly, the program works by teaching parents how to handle digital habits at home. Parents attended three online group sessions spaced out across five weeks to learn strategies for managing screens and setting rules. The researchers tracked whether this parent-centered approach changed home life. They found that it helped in two major ways. First, children cut their weekly screen time by an average of 1400 minutes. Second, parents reported lower stress levels. However, overall family functioning did not show a clear change. Neither a child's age nor an ADHD diagnosis changed how well the intervention worked. Overall, helping parents online quickly reduced both kids' screen time and parents' stress.
A parent wants their child to eat healthier. They try to force vegetables, but it leads to fights and the child still eats junk. Instead, they change the home environment—what's in the pantry, when meals happen—and the child starts making better choices on their own. Here, the program teaches parents to adjust the screen environment at home, and results show less screen time and calmer parents.
For families dealing with a child's excessive screen use, this study suggests that a short, online program for parents can lead to large reductions in screen time and lower parenting stress. This matters because problematic screen habits in children are tied to difficulties in school, social life, and mental health, and accessible interventions are urgently needed.
The study was an uncontrolled pre-post design without a control group, so changes cannot be definitively attributed to the program. The sample size was small (29 parents of 22 children). The follow-up was only post-intervention, with no longer-term data. The findings are preliminary and require confirmation in larger, controlled studies with longer follow-up and broader implementation measures.
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Effectiveness of the digital parental-family-centered program for problematic gaming and screen use in a clinical child and adolescent population — Emma Claesdotter-Knutsson, Sophie Wilts, Marie Werner et al. — Public health in practice (Oxford, England) — doi:10.1016/j.puhip.2026.100848
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.