Children given a ‘digital pacifier’ to calm tantrums do not learn how to regulate their emotions, research finds

Tantrums are a part of growing up. However, how these outbursts of anger or frustration are managed can affect the emotional development of children.

An international team of researchers has investigated how giving children digital devices that act as ‘digital pacifiers’ to prevent or manage tantrums affects children’s later anger management skills. They found that children who were routinely given digital devices when they threw a tantrum had more difficulty regulating their emotions. The researchers also emphasized the importance of allowing children to experience negative emotions and the crucial role parents play in this.

Children learn a great deal about self-regulation, that is, affective, mental, and behavioral responses to situations, during their first few years of life. Some of these behaviors involve children’s ability to choose a conscious response rather than an automatic one. This is known as effortful control, which is learned from the environment, primarily through children’s relationships with their parents.

In recent years, it has become common practice to give children digital devices to control their emotional responses, especially when they are negative. Now, a team of researchers in Hungary and Canada has investigated whether this strategy, known as parental digital emotion regulation, leads to children’s inability to effectively regulate their emotions later in life. The results appear in Frontiers in child and adolescent psychiatry.

“Here we show that if parents regularly offer their child a digital device to calm them down or stop a tantrum, the child will not learn to regulate their emotions,” says Dr. Veronika Konok, the study’s first author and a researcher at Eötvös Loránd University. “This leads to more serious problems with emotion regulation, especially anger management problems, later in life.”

More devices, less control

“We often see parents using tablets or smartphones to distract their child when they are 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,” explains Prof. Caroline Fitzpatrick, a researcher at the Université de Sherbrooke and lead author of the study. However, the researchers expected that the practice would have little long-term benefit. To confirm their hypothesis, they conducted an evaluation in 2020 and a follow-up one year later. More than 300 parents of children between the ages of two and five completed a questionnaire assessing the media use of children and parents.

They found that when parents used digital emotion regulation more often, children showed poorer anger and frustration control skills a year later. Children who were given devices more often when experiencing negative emotions also showed less effortful control at the follow-up assessment.

“Tantrums cannot be cured by digital devices,” Konok points out. “Children need to learn to deal with their negative emotions themselves. They need the help of their parents during this learning process, not the help of a digital device.”

Helping parents support their children

The researchers also found that poorer basic anger management skills made children more likely to be given digital devices as a management tool. “It is not surprising that parents are more likely to use digital emotion regulation when their child has problems with emotion regulation, but our results highlight that this strategy can lead to escalation of a pre-existing problem,” Konok said.

It is important not to avoid situations that could be frustrating for the child, the researchers pointed out. Instead, it is recommended that parents coach their children through difficult situations, helping them recognize their emotions and teach them to cope with them.

To equip parents of children with anger management problems for success, it’s important that they get support, the researchers said. 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.

“Our findings could inform the development of new training and counseling methods for parents. If people’s awareness of digital devices as inappropriate tools for tantrum management increases, children’s mental health and well-being will benefit,” Fitzpatrick concluded.