Parents Beware: Tablet Study Suggests Screen Time Fuels Toddler Tantrums
If you're a parent of a young child who is suddenly prone to angry outbursts, you may want to limit their time in front of an iPad (even one of the new M2 iPads) or other tablet. No, we're not offering up parenting advice, but passing along the insinuation of a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics, which links expressions of anger and frustration in early childhood to tablet use.
The study's researchers formed their analysis based on responses of 315 parents of preschool-aged children from Nova Scotia, Canada, and repeated the methodology at ages 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 years old from 2020 through 2022. Notably, the researchers point out that this all took place during the Covid-19 pandemic, the suggestion being that the pandemic could have affected the results.
A small majority of the sample size was identified by parents as being born boys (54%) versus girls (46%). Overall, however, the study found that "tablet use at 3.5 years was associated with more expressions of anger and frustration by the age of 4.5 years." Likewise, proneness to anger and frustration at 4.5 years old was "then associated with more use of tablets by age 5.5 years."
"These results suggest that early-childhood tablet use may contribute to a cycle that is deleterious for emotional regulation," the study states.
Unfortunately, the study doesn't delve very deep into possible reasons why tablet use in children appears linked to an increase in anger and frustration. However, the researchers do suggest that the increased screen time can take away opportunities for other activities, such as interacting with caregivers or playing with other kids, both of which "are essential for rehearsing and eventually mastering self-regulation."
"Children who fail to develop the ability to effectively manage outbursts of anger and frustration in particular are then likely to face poor health, academic, and psychosocial outcomes. Although most children show steady declines in the tendency to express anger and frustration over the course of early childhood, individual differences remain in the frequency and intensity of emotional outbursts," the study adds.
The study's authors also note that "more challenging and less well regulated" children tend to be allowed more screen time by their parents, sometimes as a calming tool to manage emotional outbursts, and other times simply to keep them occupied. As such, using a tablet is often a solitary activity for kids, which in turn can limit their ability to learn and develop strategies to manage emotions.
This can also cloud the analysis of tablet use versus anger in children, and as such, the researchers say it's important to consider possible bidirectional associations.
One other thing to note is that the study admits to not examining the quality of content viewed on tablets, or the kind of content, such as active (reading an ebook) or passive (watching YouTube videos). It's also not known to what extent a parent may have interacted with their child during tablet use.
As interesting as the tablet study might be, it also leaves room for a ton more research into the topic, as it appears to raise more questions than it answers.
Top image generated with Microsoft Copilot and Photoshop
