iPad Babies Have More Tantrums

 This week’s article summary is Why iPad Babies Have More Tantrums.

The author is an educational researcher on the effects screen time has on children’s cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development. Her research began years ago by measuring the length of time kids watched television, which used to be the dominant entertainment technology. Today mobile phones and tablets are more commonly used by children. 

Whether it’s TV or iPads, she has consistently found a correlation between the overuse of technology and delays in children’s physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development. 

But there’s a major difference between TV and mobile devices: televisions aren’t portable.

With mobile devices, parents have a readily-available babysitter beyond the living room — the article refers to using mobile devices to keep kids occupied as digital pacification. 

Many kids today use a mobile device not only as a distraction but also as a calming device when they are emotionally dysregulated. Research shows that by using an extrinsic method, younger children aren’t being given the chance to develop their own internal calming and coping mechanisms, i.e., developing executive function skills, discussed in last week’s summary

This inability to regulate emotions in age-appropriate ways has an adverse effect on students in school: poorer attention, lack of self-regulation, inability to work with others, difficulty with problem solving, etc.

While I am always hesitant to find one cause for a change in students, the article is a reminder that as an elementary school, Trinity needs to avoid leaning too heavily on technology. It’s a useful tool, but our children need face-to-face time with peers to build the skills they need for middle school and beyond.

I do wonder if the technology pendulum has begun to swing back: at this year’s Admissions Open Houses, prospective parents have asked how we limit technology use in the classrooms. Perhaps our incoming students will be less reliant on technology as their parents are beginning to limit its use and availability at home.

Joe

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We’ve all seen it happen: a young child is having a tantrum in public. They get fussy, sitting in the seat of the grocery cart or waiting with their parents to board a plane. Their voice gets louder, their face goes red. They might start pulling things off the shelves at the store, kicking their seat or even their parents. 

But before the cranky child reaches full-blown meltdown mode, they’re pacified; a tablet appears before them, playing their favorite cartoon, and, like magic, the tantrum is forgotten. The child stares, wide-eyed at the screen. Everyone around them sighs, thankful that the meltdown was avoided. 

I’ve been studying children’s screentime since 2009. Back then, I was interested in how TV consumption was contributing to their early school readiness and development.  

I studied a sample of children born in 1998 who would have been preschoolers in the early 2000s—years before the introduction of tablets and smartphones. Our studies found that TV screentime contributed to children’s school readiness across the board: it was related to their cognitive readiness, their social readiness, and their physical motor readiness. Kids who spent more hours per day watching television had less classroom engagement, more interpersonal problems with peers, a smaller vocabulary, and worse motor development. 

Of course, TV is no longer the default screen for kids. A 2025 report by Common Sense Media found that 40 per cent of toddlers have their own tablet by the time they’re two. Children in the two-to-four age range spent about two hours per day on screens, while those under two watch screens for about one hour per day. 

Imagine a three-year-old named Emma who likes to watch her favorite cartoon on a tablet. Her parents are happy because it keeps her occupied while they make dinner or do chores. But over time, Emma wants to spend more time on the tablet. When her parents say no, she gets angry and frustrated. The tablet calms her down, so sometimes, Emma’s parents bring it out to avoid a tantrum. This is what researchers call digital emotion regulation, or digital pacifying, and it’s an effective and often immediate strategy. The child calms down nearly instantly, and parents avoid a public outburst. In the short term, it’s a miracle. In the long term, not so much. 

In 2020, I ran a study measuring children’s and parents’ screen use. We found that three-year-olds who spent more time on tablets had more outbursts of anger and frustration one year later. We also found that, by age four, the children who had more outbursts were more likely to have even more screen use by age five. In a separate study, we asked parents how frequently they used tablets specifically with the aim of calming children down. Once again, more tablet use at age three was associated with more outbursts of anger and frustration at age four, and worse self-control. 

It’s a vicious cycle, where using screens to calm tantrums actually increases how often a child has tantrums in the future. We don’t know exactly what it is about screens that are causing this spiral, but it likely comes back to the fact that a tablet is an external regulation tool. That’s why it’s an effective way to stop a meltdown—it shifts children’s focus away from their emotions and onto the screen. It’s a quick fix, but it stops children from learning to regulate themselves.

Educators are concerned that children are coming into kindergarten with insufficient autonomy. This is one of the first times we expect kids to act on their own—they need to be able to take off their own jackets, follow instructions for classwork, sit at their desks. When kids struggle with autonomy, they have a hard time adapting to this transition.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard from early childhood professionals who say children now struggle more with social situations. When a conflict arises—say, if another child takes their toy—they are overly reliant on the teacher to intervene. I’ve also heard occupational therapists say they are noticing more and more young children with motor delays who can’t tie their shoes, zip up their jackets, or put on their winter clothes.

These delays might be explained by the displacement hypothesis: if children are spending more time using screens, they have less time for imaginary play, exploring their environment, or interacting with caregivers or other children. Screens can borrow time away from these activities that are developmentally essentially for children. 

Children generally improve their self-regulation during preschool years, but it’s not an automatic fix: they need adults to help them. One way is through shared book-reading, when parents can explain how characters handle negative emotions. Understanding how Junie B. Jones deals with a tough situation can help a child adopt similar strategies.  

We know that low emotional regulation can plague kids into their adult life, affecting their relationships and their physical and mental health. When we use phones as pacifiers, we’re denying kids critical opportunities to learn to regulate their emotions, setting them up for a harder go later in life. The earlier we intervene, the easier it is to snap out of the cycle.