Kids Given Technology to Pacify Tantrums Don’t Learn to Regulate

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Children come to rely on digital devices for emotional regulation instead of developing internal self-regulatory skills.

Some parents give children phones and tablets to soothe temper tantrums, but recent research finds that such practices prevent children from learning to regulate their emotions.

This parenting strategy can also put children at risk of having anger management problems and problematic screen use later in life.

“Tantrums cannot be cured by digital devices,” Veronika Konok, the study’s first author and a researcher at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, said in a news release. “Children have to learn how to manage their negative emotions for themselves. They need the help of their parents during this learning process, not the help of a digital device.”

More Anger, Less Control

In a new study published on Friday in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, researchers from Hungary and Canada surveyed nearly 300 parents of children aged 2 to 5 years in 2020 on their media use and followed up a year later.

They found that children who were more prone to anger had parents who used smartphones and tablets to calm them down. These children also typically exhibited more frequent and intense anger responses and displayed poorer anger and frustration management skills a year later upon follow-up.

They had higher levels of anger and were worse at exhibiting purposeful control of their emotions.

“It’s not surprising that parents more frequently apply digital emotion regulation if their child has emotion regulation problems, but our results highlight that this strategy can lead to the escalation of a pre-existing issue,” Ms. Konok said in the press release.

According to the study, giving a child a digital device to calm a tantrum may increase device dependence and the risk of problematic media use. The authors compared this phenomenon to a positive feedback loop. Device management leads to more tantrums and outbursts, which lead to even more screen use.

Devices May Exacerbate Tantrums

Over the past few decades, digital devices have become increasingly common in people’s daily lives, and we have learned to use them as tools to self-regulate. Self-regulation is the purposeful control over one’s thoughts, feelings, decisions, and behaviors. It is meant to be acquired during the first few years of life.

According to the study, although using a digital device to distract a child from stressful stimuli or negative emotions can be effective in the short term at reducing emotional responses in young children, in the long term, it can cause rebounding effects that lead to avoidant coping behaviors, increased negative emotions, and dysregulation.

Moreover, it could cause children to rely on digital devices for emotional regulation instead of developing internal self-regulatory skills, leading to “screen time tantrums” when devices are removed.

“Providing children with screens as a means to help calm them is a form of external self-regulation that can be very effective in the short term. However, as children develop, they need to develop internal means of self-regulation to be able to competently manage their emotions,” Caroline Fitzpatrick, a researcher at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec and senior author of the study, told The Epoch Times.

The study authors suggest that instead of giving a child a digital device in a frustrating setting, parents should coach their children through difficult situations, help them recognize their emotions, and teach them how to handle them.

Study Limitations

Although the study provides valuable insight, the researchers said its findings have several limitations, including reliance on parent-reported data. Some parents also dropped out of the study before follow-up, which may have skewed results. Younger parents and parents more likely to use digital emotional regulation were less likely to participate in the follow-up, potentially distorting the observed associations.

Additionally, data collection occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period characterized by increased digital device use due to lockdowns, which may have influenced digital device usage patterns.

The authors suggest future research should aim to replicate these findings in different contexts and with a more diverse population. Additionally, observational data on child self-regulation and parental use of digital devices for emotional regulation could provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics observed in the study.