Consequences of using the phone as a means of calming children

Children learn a lot about self-regulation, how to respond to certain situations, during their first years of life, which may give them the ability to act calmly rather than get angry in difficult situations.

However, in recent years it has become popular to give children digital devices when they experience mixed feelings and emotions.

And a team from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary has discovered that doing so could have devastating long-term consequences.

In the study, the team asked 265 parents to fill out questionnaires about their children's behavior (they were 3.5 years old on average), and a follow-up questionnaire was administered a year later.

The analysis found that the more parents tended to give their children phones or tablets as a "calming tool," the worse their children's anger and frustration management skills were a year later.

“Here we show that if parents regularly provide their children with a digital device to calm them down or stop a tantrum, the child will not learn to regulate their emotions,” said Dr Veronica Konuk, the study’s first author. “This leads to more serious problems with emotion regulation, especially anger management problems, later in life. Tantrums cannot be cured with digital devices, and children must learn to manage their negative emotions themselves.”

It is recommended that parents coach their children through difficult situations, help them recognize their feelings, and teach them how to deal with them.

The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.