Letting upset children use tablets ‘may cause more tantrums’, study says

Trying to calm down an upset toddler with a screen may backfire, with a study finding that children who used tablets more often went on to have more tantrums.
The researchers recruited 315 small children, whose behaviour and tablet use was tracked for three years. They found that those who used tablets, such as iPads, more often at the age of three went on to have more “expressions of anger and frustration” by the time they were four-years-old.
The researchers found that these children were likely to be using tablets more frequently a year later — possibly because their parents had taken to handing them the devices to try to settle them down.
“These results suggest that early childhood tablet use may contribute to a cycle that is deleterious for emotional regulation,” the researchers wrote in the journal Jama Pediatrics.
“Children who spend more hours using screens may forfeit opportunities to engage in activities, such as interactions with caregivers or free play with other children that are essential for rehearsing and eventually mastering self-regulation,” they added.
The parents were asked to assess their children by saying how much they agreed with statements such as “my child gets angry when told they have to go to bed”. They did this on a seven-point scale where a score of one suggested that a child only succumbed to tantrums very rarely, while a score of seven meant they were often upset.
For every additional 70 mins of tablet use a day at the age of three and a half, there was about a quarter point increase on the tantrum scale a year later. The study was observational, which means it could not prove that tablet use caused children to express more anger, and experts said the findings should be viewed with caution.
Professor Chris Ferguson of psychology at Stetson University, said that the link between screen use and anger appeared to be small. “The good news for parents is that most studies don’t find much relationship between screen use and youth aggression,” he said.
However, the authors of the study called on parents to avoid relying on devices as “digital pacifiers”. According to Ofcom, about a quarter of five to seven-year-olds in the UK now owns a smartphone, while three-quarters use a tablet.
Caroline Fitzpatrick, a professor of child development at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada, who led the research, said: “Parents should also be cautioned to avoid handing children mobile devices as a strategy for calming them.
“Parents of children who are more prone to outbursts of anger and frustration could also favour child activities that help build self-regulation skills. These could be playing make-believe, book reading, and physical activity.”
Another recent study, published in the journal Pediatric Research, looked at the tactics parents could use to limit the amount of time children spent on social media or playing video games. One of the most successful strategies involved parents placing limits on their own screen use, especially in front of their children. By contrast, using screen time as a reward or a punishment tended to backfire.
Dr Jason Nagata, of the University of California, who led the study, said: “These results are heartening because they give parents some concrete strategies they can use with their tweens and young teens: set screen time limits, keep track of your kids’ screen use and avoid screens in bedrooms and at mealtimes.”
According to the most recent Ofcom figures, the average amount of time adults spent online in May 2023 was 3 hours and 41 minutes a day. This meant the average online adult spent about 56 days each year online, which is two more days than a year earlier.
Young adults aged 18–24 spend the most time online at 4 hours 36 minutes each day in May 2023. Children aged 8-12-years-old, which is the youngest group tracked by Ofcom, spent an average of 3 hours 5 minutes a day accessing the internet. The same report found that 22 per cent of 8–17-year-olds with a social media profile had falsely told the platform that they were over 18, putting them at greater risk of encountering age-inappropriate and harmful content.