It can be very tempting to give an irritable child a phone or tablet to calm them down.
But doing so means they may not learn to regulate their emotions, experts warned.
Children learn a lot about self-regulation (how to respond to certain situations) during their first years of life.
It can give them the ability to react calmly rather than angrily in frustrating or stressful situations, and helps them learn to get along with others and be independent.
However, in recent years it has become more common to gift children with digital devices when their emotions become overwhelming.
The analysis revealed that the more parents used phones or tablets as a pacifying tool, the worse their anger and frustration management skills were one year later.
And researchers have found that doing so could have harmful long-term repercussions.
A team from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary asked 265 parents to fill out questionnaires about their children’s behavior.
Their children were, on average, 3.5 years old, and a follow-up questionnaire was administered one year later.
The analysis found that the more parents used phones or tablets as a pacifying tool, the worse their children’s anger and frustration management skills were a year later.
Dr Veronika Konok, first author of the study, said: “Here we show that if parents regularly offer a digital device to their child to calm them down or stop a tantrum, the child will not learn to regulate their emotions.”
“This leads to more serious emotion regulation problems, specifically anger management problems, later in life.
‘Tantrums cannot be cured with digital devices. Children have to learn to manage their negative emotions themselves.
“They need the help of their parents during this learning process, not the help of a digital device.”
The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, also revealed that children who had poorer anger management skills were more likely to receive digital devices.
“It’s not surprising that parents more frequently use digital emotion regulation if their children have emotion regulation issues,” said Dr. Konok.
“But our results highlight that this strategy can lead to the escalation of a pre-existing problem.”
The team said it is important not to avoid situations that may be frustrating for the child.
Instead, parents are advised to coach their children through difficult situations, help them recognize their emotions, and teach them how to manage them.
They suggested that 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.
Professor Caroline Fitzpatrick, a researcher at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec and lead author of the study, said: ‘Based on our results, new methods of training and counselling for parents could be developed.
“If people’s awareness increases that digital devices are inadequate tools for curing tantrums, children’s mental health and well-being will benefit.”