Children given digital devices for tantrums ‘fail to learn emotion regulation’

Simply handing a child a mobile phone or tablet when they throw a tantrum may be damaging their ability to manage their emotions, new research suggests.

According to the study, if parents regularly use digital devices to calm their children, that child could have issues with emotion regulation – which could lead to anger management problems in later life.

Children learn a lot about self-regulation – affective, mental, and behavioural responses to certain situations – during their first few years of life, and this is mainly done through their relationship with their parents, researchers say.

In recent years, it has become more common to give children digital devices to control their responses to emotions, especially if they are  negative.

But the researchers suggest that if people knew digital devices were not appropriate for dealing with tantrums, the mental health and wellbeing of children would benefit.

Dr Veronika Konok, the study’s first author and a researcher at Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary, said: “Tantrums cannot be cured by digital devices.

“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.”

She added: “Here we show that if parents regularly offer a digital device to their child to calm them or to stop a tantrum, the child won’t learn to regulate their emotions.

“This leads to more severe emotion-regulation problems, specifically, anger management problems, later in life.”

Senior author, Professor Caroline Fitzpatrick, a researcher at the Universite de Sherbrooke, Canada, added: “We frequently see that parents use tablets or smart phones to divert the child’s attention when the child is upset.

“Children are fascinated by digital content, so this is an easy way to stop tantrums and it is very effective in the short term.”

She continued: “If people’s awareness about digital devices being inappropriate tools for curing tantrums increases, children’s mental health and wellbeing will profit.”

However, the researchers suspected that over the long term this strategy may not be very beneficial.

In 2020, they conducted an assessment and a followed-up one year later.

More than 300 parents of children aged between two- and five-years-old completed a questionnaire which assessed child and parent media use.

According to the findings, when parents used digital emotion regulation more often, children showed poorer anger and frustration management skills a year later.

Children who were given devices more often as they experienced negative emotions also showed less ability to choose a deliberate response over an automatic one.

The study, published in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, also found that poorer anger management skills at the beginning meant children were given digital devices more often as a management tool.

“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,” Dr Konok said.

The researchers suggest that health experts could provide information on how parents can help their children manage their emotions without giving them tablets or smart phones.