In order to better understand how screen usage in children relates to their social and emotional development, we examined the relations between problematic media use, effortful control (i.e. at- tentional focusing and inhibitory control, which are essential skills in emotion-related regulation), and externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Data were collected on 143 children 6 to 12 years old (Mage = 9.33 years, SD = 1.87; 70 boys and 73 girls). After obtaining parental consent, 140 biologi- cal parents and 3 adoptive parents (116 moms and 27 dads; Mage = 40.08 years, SD = 6.80) filled in questionnaires on their child’s effortful control, prob- lematic media use, and externalizing and internaliz- ing problem behaviors. All measures were reliable. In the correlational analyses, effortful control was associated with significantly less problematic media use and fewer externalizing and internalizing behavior problems (ps < .001). Regression analyses suggest- ed that problematic media use is predicted by more externalizing behavior problems (but not internalizing behaviors) and less effortful control. When predict- ing externalizing and internalizing behavior problems from effortful control and problematic media use, externalizing behaviors were predicted by both problematic media use and effortful control, while internalizing problem behaviors were predicted solely by effortful control. Finally, we used Hayes’ Process method in SPSS to conduct mediational analyses. More problematic media use predicted less effortful control, which in turn predicted more internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. However, the direction of these mediations in this cross-sectional study is not clear. We also found that better effortful control predicted less problematic media use, which predicted fewer internalizing and externalizing prob- lem behaviors. This study underlines the importance of further studying these constructs in a longitudinal study. The bi-directionality in the relations between emotion-related regulation and media use is discussed.