S2 Episode 5: Tantrums, Toddlers & Technology // Dr. Sarah Coyne, Ph.D.

“Kids are still developing so much that they don't use the term 'addiction' in early childhood, but they do say 'problematic media.'”

-Dr. Sarah Coyne, Ph.D.

Healthy Screen Habit Takeaway

Show Transcript

​​Hillary Wilkinson (00:00):

Every now and again, you get these really weird moments of experiencing a cliche. And I had that happen when I was first introduced to today's guest. I was literally stopped in my tracks. I was walking my dog and I didn't even realize I'd come to a complete standstill after receiving an email regarding a study titled: Tantrums, Toddlers, and Technology. And I had to know more! So I'm so grateful to be talking today to the lead author on that study, professor and researcher, Dr. Sarah Coyne. Welcome to the Healthy Screen Habits Podcast!

Sarah Coyne (00:43):

Hi, thank you so much for having me on the program.

Hillary Wilkinson (00:46):

Certainly. So Sarah, when we talk about tantrums, we often hear that term emotional regulation or emotion regulation, uh, before we get into your study, I kind of want to do some backing up and just talking about the, the terms that get used so that everybody understands what we're talking about. Kind of. And can you explain what is that? What is emotion regulation?

Sarah Coyne (01:13):

Emotion regulation is the ability to manage and control your own emotions. And so, for example, if I get really angry at you in this podcast, right, uh, I hope not. I handle and start swearing and you know, this and this and this, or I could manage that anger and like try to stay calm and like keep it under control. Right. And so we, we do this every single day. I will not get mad at you by the way. Okay.

Hillary Wilkinson (01:40):

OK! We'd have to change our rating, you know? Okay. So building on that, you talk about media emotion regulation as well. And what is that? What does that look like?

Sarah Coyne (01:55):

We use that term when parents use media to manage their child's emotions. So classic example, right? You're at the grocery store, your toddlers freaking out, cause they want something. And so they're upset, they're crying, they're wailing. And so you pass them your phone to try to get them to stop and to calm down. So, so that's kind of one example in childhood, but we kind of do this ourselves. Right. So think about kind of the times maybe you use media to manage your own emotions. You know, I'm feeling upset, I'm feeling stressed out. And so I'm going to throw on social media or, you know, watch a show or, or, you know, things like that. Young childhood it's often parent directed.

Hillary Wilkinson (02:42):

I think that's a really good visual. We can all picture that or have experienced that ourselves. And um, yeah. So would you say following the results of your study, w is this a healthy way? Is media emotion regulation a healthy way to handle emotion regulation? 

Sarah Coyne (03:07):

It's not following the results of our study. Um, we found that it kind of backfires, so kids tend to rely on media even more and then, um, tend to tantrum at even higher levels. Um, in the context of media is what, how we looked at it. But, but yeah, it kind of backfires on them.

Hillary Wilkinson (03:31):

 So it's a little bit like, um, kerosene on a fire. It may staunch the flames at first, but then they come back roaring yeah.

Sarah Coyne (03:39):

Yeah. So short-term gain long-term loss. I'd say.

Hillary Wilkinson (03:42):

Got you. I'm so interested to hear more, but first we need to take a little break.

Hillary Wilkinson (03:51):

My guest today is Sarah Coyne, a professor of human development in the school of family life at Brigham Young University in Utah. Sarah, you have five children of your own. Do they ever affect your research or help you decide what you're going to study?

Sarah Coyne (04:17):

All the time.

Hillary Wilkinson (04:19):

I love that.

Sarah Coyne (04:20):

I get a lot of ideas from my kids.

Hillary Wilkinson (04:21):

I love that. Do you want to, um, do you want to share anything about your kids?

Sarah Coyne (04:23):

Sure.

Sarah Coyne (04:28):

Yeah. I've got four boys and one girl, uh, they range in age from four years old to almost 17. So we can't keep very, very busy, um, one recent example of, of a kid that inspired my research. So when my daughter, Hannah was three years old, uh, she was really into Disney princesses and I went to a talk, uh, that was talking about how princesses are kind of destroying humanity, not, not that far, but kind of responsible for the problems we experience as women in terms of body image or sexual objectification or things like that. And, and first I thought, well, I'm destroying my daughter, but second of all, I thought, you know, people haven't actually studied the impact of princess culture on young kids. Uh, I study media and child development, so that'd be a pretty fun study to do. Sure. And so that sparked kind of a 10 year study. Uh, my daughter's 13 now.

Hillary Wilkinson (05:27):

Just it just a brief little dally into…

Sarah Coyne (05:30):

Yeah. Yeah. Just dip my toe in there.... but yeah, it's been fascinating.

Hillary Wilkinson (05:35):

It is very interesting. I wish I could hear more about that, but today we're, so we're focusing on a different study that you did, which was your study on Tantrums, Toddlers and Technology. So you also, within that study, you refer to screen media and problematic media. And before we take a deep dive, the, your findings of the research, could you explain those terms that what is screen media and problematic media.

Sarah Coyne (06:06):

Sure, uh, screen media is just the amount of time that you spend using a screen. That's what kind of the overall amount of time you're watching TV in a day, as an, as an example. And problematic media is something that's just beginning to be examined in early childhood. And it's, it's kind of an addictive form of media use, uh, similar to what we see in adolescents and adults, sort of akin to a video game addiction. Um, kids are still developing so much that they don't use the term addiction in early childhood, but they do say problematic media.

Hillary Wilkinson (06:38):

Oh, okay. In 2018 – the World Health Organization officially recognized Gaming Disorder as a mental health condition in their International Classification of Diseases, the organizations official diagnostic manual.   The Gaming Disorder chapter focuses on disorders cause by the addictive nature of excessive online video game playing.

Of course this was met with much controversy and opposition from the video game industry.

The American Psychiatric Association has not yet included video game addiction in it’s most recent edition of the DSM-5. This can make navigating insurance tricky for those families and individuals seeking treatment or help with a gaming disorder because coverage will often be problematic.

Sarah Coyne (06:38):

Yeah. So this is when media, um, causes conflict in family relationships. The child is sneaking media or lying about media, child seems to be fixated on media, always asking for it, um, pitching big tantrums and when media is removed, um, and so on. And so something that we're doing in our own research is trying to figure out is: Is problematic media and early childhood, a precursor to developing a pretty significant media addiction later on in life?

Hillary Wilkinson (07:10):

Oh, wow. That's have you done any further study on that or? 

Sarah Coyne (07:15):

We're doing a longitudinal study right now. Um, the kids are four and a half. We've been seeing them since birth and we're hoping them to, we're hoping to follow them until adolescence or early adulthood.

Hillary Wilkinson (07:27):

I so admire you with these longitudinal studies on childhood. It's just, I always seem to have that backwards glance of like, oh, I wish I had been looking at it since then. So I'm, I'm so glad there are people like you who are pre-thinkers,

Sarah Coyne (07:44):

If you want to fund our research. That'd be cool too. Yeah.

Hillary Wilkinson (07:48):

I, I got lots of that laying around Sarah, you know, the nonprofit sector, - we're just rolling in it.

Sarah Coyne (07:51):

Right. You're rolling in the dough. Haha

Hillary Wilkinson (07:56):

Okay. So one of the things I'm really intrigued about is how do you collect temperament data on toddlers? I mean, it's, I, I read in your study, the quote that "Toddlers had more extreme emotions when media was removed." I, we certainly all, like, I mean, we all know what that looks like, but how do you go about collecting the data?

Sarah Coyne (08:24):

So, Uh, this is a sample of several hundred kids in Denver, and we spend the summer living in Denver, me and my students, and we go into family homes and we do all sorts of tasks with families. It's a study called Project Media, right. To find out the longterm impact of media on kids. Then the task you're talking about is a fascinating one. So we have them watch, um, in this study it was, they watched five minutes of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. And it was interestingly, it was about emotion regulation. Like the episode Daniel gets mad or Catarina gets mad. So it's all about like how to manage your difficult emotions. Right. And so then after five minutes, we told the parents to take it away. And as you know, like when you're watching something and you're invested and someone takes it away, it's kind of frustrating. Right?

Hillary Wilkinson (09:14):

Sure.

Sarah Coyne (09:15):

And so we recorded the whole thing. And so we, we recorded the infant's behavior. Uh, two minutes after media was removed and then spent several months coding that behavior, the infant's behavior, and also the parent's behavior around what happened to see if we could capture some problematic media. So is the child's fixated on the media? Does the child show extreme emotion when media is removed? So could we capture kind of tantrums in the moment?

Sarah Coyne (10:33):

Exactly. Yeah. And so we found that those families that were high in media emotion regulation, their kids tended to show, uh, problematic media responses, uh, both in a questionnaire that we did. And then also in this kind of extreme emotion where, um, they tended to tantrum more when media was removed.

Hillary Wilkinson (10:53):

All of this talk about media emotion regulation makes me think of a concept that we often spend time talking about at Healthy Screen Habits. In which digital distraction when used to regulate emotions can become a big problem.  I’ll give you a quick break down:

Human beings by nature try to move towards comfort. The trick is learning how to deal with discomfort in an emotionally healthy way. Unfortunately, when we deal with big feelings by using screens to distract or numb it has the potential to  create BIG problems. 

Kids can find themselves locked in a cycle that is creating vulnerability rather than building strength, durability and resilience.

If you can picture a wheel or triangle with three points that is kind of the classic symbol of a cycle you can easily picture what we at Healthy Screen Habits have developed and call the “Cycle of Vulnerability”  - so – this isn’t the type of vulnerability that Brene Brown talks about.  She has made the argument to lean into vulnerability to  authenticate your human experience….this is more of the type of vulnerability like a loose trestle under a bridge ….this type of vulnerability leads to addictive behavior and is the opposite of durability and resiliency.

This cycle has 3 points and entry can start at any of them.  The points are: Big Feelings, Self-Soothing, and Overuse of Technology.  Because we have to choose an entry point let’s start with talking about Big Feelings or emotional discomfort.

Childhood has uncomfortable moments, it’s a time of massive change, very little control and constant learning.  Change is hard. Learning is hard.  When it becomes overwhelming we often have really big feelings that can feel like emotional discomfort.  Our kids naturally seek to move towards the 2nd spot on our cycle which is seeking comfort by self-soothing or self regulating.

If we hand our child a device at this point to bring them to a calm state we are robbing them of the opportunity to learn how to self regulate.  We need to teach self-regulation by naming their feelings, moving their bodies and problem solving.  If kids don’t know how to self-soothe and have been taught to seek distraction rather than self-regulation , they often- out of convenience and habit - turn to digital distraction.

This is a problem because the underlying issue is not being addressed…emotions are not being taught or acknowledged, root causes are not being addressed & instead – what is being used as a coping mechanism is distraction.   Distraction is not self-care. This use of digital distraction can lead to the 3rd spot on the cycle which is: overuse of technology.

Overuse of technology is problematic for a number of reasons – Problems don’t get solved or worse – can escalate in the theater of group texts and social media, Excessive gaming can lead to sedentary habits and unhealthy choices, mindless scrolling increases the risk of exposure to inappropriate material, and it establishes an overall habit of using distraction in place of self-care. 

Having no resolution of the original issues that lead towards comfort seeking - kids become trapped in a perpetuation of this loop. 

The worse they feel, the more they use, which in turn makes them feel worse….and then use more...

This is why Sarah Coyne’s research study stopped me in my tracks – it talks about the foundation of setting up this cycle….when we realize the effects of handing a digital device to “calm” a tantruming child.  I’ll put the image of this cycle in the shownotes of this episode

Hillary Wilkinson (09:44):

Interesting. Okay. So, after all of this collection and all of this analysis, can you share some of your conclusions?

Sarah Coyne (09:57):

Yes, definitely. So we found that for children whose parents use media emotion regulation. So, so remember that's like parents using media to calm their kids down and other circumstances.

Hillary Wilkinson (10:11):

Right. So they're using it as kind of a, an emotional splint or an emotional band-aid to kind of quiet and calm, but in actuality, what we're not doing when we do that, when we hand tech to our kids, we're serving to distract, but we're not giving them the tools to learn how to self-regulate.

Hillary Wilkinson (10:55):

So, um, as someone who, I mean, I can't think of anybody who spends more time with families and children and researches topics like media and aggression and child development. Is there anything that you wish all parents knew about kids and technology or toddlers and technology? Is there anything that you feel like if I could just put this on a billboard, you know, on any freeway or New York, you know, New York city street, what would you say you would like them to know?

Sarah Coyne (11:36):

That's a really good question. I would say, um, we focus a lot of our energy around screen time, and we assume that reducing screen time will solve all of our problems, but as I've done quite a bit of research on the topic, it's not necessarily the time they're spending, it's the context. And so in the example, we just talked about the context of media was to calm somebody down, right? Instead of letting them express their emotions or talk about emotions or so on. Um, so that's a context that's not all that helpful and actually kind of backfired, right? So if we can teach kids to be critical thinkers around their own media use and to be intentional about the ways that they use media, I think it would have a marked impact on, on creating a generation that are, are more healthy media users.

Hillary Wilkinson (12:33):

Right. So, uh, so you think that there should be, maybe if we could place the emphasis more on, you know, there's been this big drive on digital citizenship and it's kind of like how to, how to live within the virtual world, but maybe an addendum to digital citizenship is just how to manage digital health.

Sarah Coyne (13:23):

Yes. I absolutely agree with you on that. So my kids have had those type of classes and I was like, oh my gosh, you've a media literacy class. I'm so excited. But then it's, it's, it's about, you know, don't share your passwords or, um, you know, things like that, which is great. Like absolutely they need that information, but I would love it if they had a class that helped them to interpret media messages that they were seeing in terms of like violence or body image or sex, or, you know, all of the gamut and then also digital health. Right? So yeah. How can I use these devices? And they're just, they're just tools to help. So I'm not like the servant of this device, right. I'm the master of it. And then does it enrich my own life? I think that would go such a far way if, if every child in America had that type of class.

Hillary Wilkinson (14:10):

I do too. And I think it's more of a relevant message for today's youth than the, you know, the "don't use it" kind , I feel like we'd get more buy-in, you know, if the kids can have their own fingerprint on managing it, I mean, we all know it, technology is not going away. So they just, this, um, instruction. I, I, uh, like to compare it to, you know, the classic example is driving. You know, we have hours and hours of training and drivers training. You do essentially lab work. And then you do, uh, you know, in driving with practice and cars, you learn defensive techniques, et cetera, et cetera. And it doesn't seem, it seems as though right now, all that's being addressed as far as, and I'm just talking about my own family's experience with their digital citizenship classes is it's all the, like the, the bookwork of being a good digital citizen. It's not necessarily like what we were talking about. Okay. So when we come back after this short break, I'm going to ask Sarah for her healthy screen habit.

Hillary Wilkinson (15:34):

We're back. I'm talking with Dr. Sarah Coyne, who regularly researches media, aggression, gender, and child development. She has over 100 publications on these and other topics. And we have like barely dipped our toes into the vast wealth of knowledge that you have. I feel like we could spend the next afternoon talking. I'm hoping that you could share just a tidbit of this knowledge with us in the form of a healthy screen habit for our listeners. So this is a tip or takeaway that our listeners can put into practice in their own home. And do you have one that you could share with us today?

Sarah Coyne (16:25):

I sure do. I've got a lot of them. Um, so my tip is to be more active in your social media use.

Hillary Wilkinson (16:36):

Okay. I'm really interested in hearing you tease that apart. Cause I gotta tell ya. I mean, I, I sound like I'm negating all this stuff that we just talked about about the take it away, but I'm, I'm really, you know, Healthy Screen Habits we're very much about intentional tech use. And so I'm interested in what this looks like to you.

Sarah Coyne (16:57):

You're going to like this. I promise. So there's two major ways that people use social media. Uh, the first is passive use and that's how most of us use it. So you get on Instagram and you just scroll and you scroll and you scroll and you don't really do much and you just keep scrolling. Right? The second is active use active use is where you're an active participant in social media. So you're posting yourself, you're commenting on other people's posts, even just kind of liking as a low-level one. Um, but you're supporting and you're actively connecting with others around you as opposed to just scrolling. And there's been quite a bit of research on the distinction between those two types of use. Um, if you use it in passive ways, it tends to be related to a negative mental health outcomes. Oh, using it in active ways though.

Sarah Coyne (17:46):

It tends to be related to a reduction in depressive and anxiety symptoms. And so, uh, if, if, when you're on social media, again, if we could have a generation that were more active and, and like I said, more intentional, right? And you think to use your word, um, about being active in their connections and so on. Um, mental health health would increase on the whole as opposed to decrease, which is what you know everyone's talking about.

Hillary Wilkinson (18:15):

Absolutely.

Sarah Coyne (18:15):

So it's very, I've put it in my own life every time on social media, I make sure that I'm commenting and I'm commenting positive things and trying to lift others up. I'm thinking about the way that it makes me feel, uh, when I'm on social media or the connections I'm making, um, to ensure that I'm having a positive experience as opposed to a negative one.

Hillary Wilkinson (18:34):

That's fantastic. I you're right. I did like it. I was a little bit like, whoa, what are we going to talk about here? But I got to tell you it totally, it totally supports that whole, um, you know, coming from a place of creativity versus from a place of consumption.

Sarah Coyne (18:49):

Yeah.

Hillary Wilkinson (18:50):

And I think anytime that we are engaged in creating, we are kind of feeding those neural networks as opposed to that consumption, which seems to depress things and lay things down.

Sarah Coyne (19:02):

Yeah. So, so again, it's not about screen time if me and you used social media for an hour and you use passively and I use actively, we would have a totally different experience even though our time is the exact same.

Hillary Wilkinson (19:13):

Interesting. Okay. Well, great things to think about. And I know I learned a lot today. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us and for sharing your work.

Sarah Coyne (19:25):

Thank you so much for having me on the, on the program.