It can be all too tempting to hand a fractious child a phone or tablet to calm them down.
But doing so means they may fail to learn how to regulate their emotions, experts have warned.
Children learn much about self-regulation – how to respond to certain situations – during their first few years of life.
It can give them the ability react calmly instead of angrily in frustrating or stressful situations, and helps them learn how to get along with others and become independent.
In recent years, however, it has become more common to give children digital devices when their emotions become overwhelming.
Analysis revealed that the more parents used phones or tablets as a pacifying tool, the worse their children were at anger and frustration management skills a year later
And researchers are have discovered doing so could have damaging long-term repercussions.
A team from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary asked 265 parents to fill out questionnaires on their child’s behaviour.
Their children were, on average, 3.5 years old and a follow-up questionnaire took place a year later.
Analysis revealed that the more parents used phones or tablets as a pacifying tool, the worse their children were at anger and frustration management skills a year later.
Dr Veronika Konok, the study’s first author, said: ‘Here we show that if parents regularly offer a digital device to their child to calm them or to stop a tantrum, the child won’t learn to regulate their emotions.
‘This leads to more severe emotion-regulation problems, specifically anger management problems, later in life.
‘Tantrums cannot be cured by digital devices. Children have to learn how to manage their negative emotions for 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 baseline anger management skills were more likely to be given digital devices.
‘It’s not surprising that parents more frequently apply digital emotion regulation if their child has emotion regulation problems,’ Dr Konok said.
‘But our results highlight that this strategy can lead to the escalation of a pre-existing issue.’
The team said it is important not to avoid situations that could be frustrating to the child.
Instead, it is recommended that parents coach their children through difficult situations, help them recognise their emotions, and teach them how to handle them.’
They suggested that health professionals working 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 Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec and senior author of the study, said: ‘Based on our results, new training and counselling methods could be developed for parents.
‘If peoples’ awareness about digital devices being inappropriate tools for curing tantrums increases, children’s mental health and well-being will profit.’