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It starts off small. Maybe you promise an extra 15 minutes of tablet time if your kid finishes their veggies. Or you hold the TV remote hostage until all the toys are picked up. Before long, screen time becomes the ultimate currency in parenting. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.
A recent report by Bright Horizons found that 55% of parents use technology as a bargaining chip to get their children to do things like chores or homework. Fifty-eight percent of parents use technology as a parenting tool to keep their children quiet while shopping or in a restaurant.1
As screens become more intertwined with daily life, it’s worth asking: is this strategy helping us, or could it be creating more problems than it solves?
How Using Screen Time to Control Behavior Can Impact Kids
Sanam Hafeez PsyD, New York City-based neuropsychologist director of Comprehend the Mind, explains that when screen time turns into the go-to reward for good behavior or the main method for emotional relief, it can establish harmful routines.
“Digital rewards for tasks may prevent children from learning internal coping strategies and cause reward expectations for every action,” she says. “Extended exposure to screens as a reward system may eventually impair their capacity to wait for rewards, handle frustration, and enjoy activities that don’t involve screens.”
Dr. Hafeez adds that the use of screen time to control children’s behavior, such as reducing tantrums or rewarding good performance, teaches them to link screen usage with emotional control and seeking approval from outside sources.
“Digital devices become essential to their emotional well-being as children develop dependencies for comfort and validation through screen time. The regular use of screens as behavioral management tools may disrupt children’s development of patience and their ability to tolerate boredom, while also undermining their acquisition of healthy coping mechanisms.”
Helen Egger, MD, co-founder and chief scientific and medical officer of Little Otter, shares similar concerns, saying it’s less about the occasional use and more about the pattern that emerges. “When screen time becomes the go-to strategy for navigating every challenge—the primary bargaining chip, the constant distraction, the expected reward—that’s when we start to see potential impacts on a child’s emotional growth.”
She continues by explaining how children learn to understand and manage their feelings through experience and guidance. “If screens are consistently used to bypass those feelings—to distract from sadness, to reward good behavior instead of intrinsic satisfaction—they might miss out on developing those crucial internal coping mechanisms. They might also learn that screens are the primary source of pleasure or the only way to avoid discomfort.”
Similar to any reward system used to manage behavior, Dr. Egger says parents can cause children to unintentionally assigning a high emotional value to screen time, which leads to dependence.
How Screen Time Incentives Can Impact a Parent’s Effectiveness With Their Child
Gilly Kahn PhD, a psychologist based in Atlanta, warns that when parents use screen time as a literal bargaining chip—wherein it becomes part of a punishment or a “bribe”—that’s when the parent-child relationship can be affected negatively.
“For example, if a child refuses to comply with a parent’s command and the parent says, ‘Fine. If you clean your room, you’ll get another hour of video game time,’ that would be an ineffective way to implement electronics as a tool,” she says.
She explains how this approach is reactive, and may send the message that as long as a task is complete—even if it’s delayed or first met with complaints—a reward will still come.
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Mother is sharing tablet PC with boy at home. Parents/Morsa Images via getty
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