Digital devices as a cure for tantrums? Study shows they lead to children’s inability to effectively regulate their emotions later in life.
- If parents regularly offer their child a digital device to calm them down or to stop a tantrum, the child does not learn to regulate his emotions.
- In detail, he presents worse skills in anger and frustration management a year later.
- Rather than putting him in front of a screen, parents are advised to accompany the child in difficult situations, to help him recognize his emotions and to teach him how to manage them.
Tablets, phones, computers, TVs… Parents often use them to stop tantrums. The problem is that using screens as emotional pacifiers can have unintended long-term consequences. This is what researchers from Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) and the University of Sherbrooke (Canada) recently revealed. To reach this conclusion, they conducted a study, the results of which were published in the journal Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Tantrums: Children using digital devices were less able to manage their frustration
As part of this work, the scientists sought to understand the link between parents’ use of digital devices to regulate their children’s emotions and the development of children’s self-regulation skills, i.e. the emotional, mental and behavioral responses (anger/frustration management, effort control, impulsivity) to certain situations. To do this, the team invited 265 parents of children to respond to a questionnaire assessing the use of media by children and parents on two occasions, in 2020 when the children were aged 3 and a half and then a year later.
The results showed that when parents used more often “digital regulation of emotions”, Children showed poorer anger and frustration management skills one year later. Children who were given digital devices more often when they were experiencing negative emotions also showed less effortful control at the follow-up assessment.
Helping children manage negative emotions
“Digital devices cannot cure tantrums. Children need to learn to manage their negative emotions on their own. They need help from their parents in this learning process, not from a digital device,” “So parents should not avoid these situations that could be frustrating for the child,” explained Veronika Konok, lead author of the research.
For parents of children with anger management issues to be able to succeed, it’s important that they receive support, the authors say. For example, health professionals who work with families could provide information on how parents can help their children manage their emotions without giving them tablets or smartphones.
