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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2024 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: Emotion. 2023 Apr 13;23(8):2194–2204. doi: 10.1037/emo0001222

Silencing screaming with screens: The longitudinal relationship between media emotion regulation processes and children’s emotional reactivity, emotional knowledge, and empathy

Sarah M Coyne 1, Peter J Reschke 1, Laura Stockdale 1, Megan Gale 1, Jane Shawcroft 1, Douglas A Gentile 2, Mindy Brown 3, Sarah Ashby 1, Matthew Siufanua 1, MarjAnn Ober 1
PMCID: PMC10570398  NIHMSID: NIHMS1884363  PMID: 37053409

Abstract

Many parents use screens to regulate their young children’s emotions. We know very little, however, about how this parenting practice is related to the development of emotional competencies (i.e., emotional reactivity, emotion knowledge, and empathy) over time. The current longitudinal study examined bi-directional associations between media emotion regulation and various emotional competencies across a 1-year period during early childhood (between ages 3.5–4.5 on average). Participants included 269 child/parent dyads who completed a number of in-home tasks and questionnaires. Results revealed that higher levels of media emotion regulation were associated with worse emotional knowledge and empathy and higher emotional reactivity at the cross-sectional level. However, early media emotion regulation was associated with higher levels of child empathy one year later. We discuss these results in the context of general parenting practices and encourage future research on the topic with a focus on how these processes develop over time.

Keywords: Emotion, Media, Early childhood, Emotional reactivity, Empathy

Most parents will face the challenge of their young child having a tantrum at the grocery store or other public place. One increasingly common method a parent may use to help calm their child is to give them a media device. This strategy, termed media emotion regulation, has recently received attention in the scientific literature (e.g., Coyne et al., 2021). Higher levels of media emotion regulation are related to increased negative emotion in toddlers (average age 2 ½ years) when the media are taken away. The effects of media emotion regulation on children’s emotional development, however, are unknown – particularly over time.

Recognizing emotion and responding appropriately to emotions are foundational to healthy social functioning in early childhood (e.g., Denham et al., 2003; Walle & Campos, 2012) and have been shown to be related to positive competencies across childhood, including empathy and prosocial behavior (Eggum et al., 2011). Extant research has linked parenting practices to these skills (e.g., Wong et al., 2020; Fabes et al., 1994). As has been noted, little is known about whether parents’ use of media emotion regulation relates to children’s emotion knowledge, empathy, and emotional reactivity across development. To better understand the relationship between young children’s emotion regulation practices and emotional development, this paper explored cross-sectional and longitudinal relations between parents’ use of media emotion regulation and young children’s emotion knowledge, empathy, and emotional reactivity longitudinally across two years.

Bioecological Theory of Child Development

To frame the relationship between parents’ use of media emotion regulation strategies and children’s emotion knowledge, empathy, and emotional reactivity, we adopt a developmental-contextual lens, specifically Bronfenbrenner’s Process, Person, Context, Time (PPCT) model (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Within this framework, proximal processes are understood as complex interactions between the developing child and aspects of their environment such as other individuals, symbols, or objects (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994), and are the primary drivers of child development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). For our purposes, we conceptualize parents’ use of media emotion regulation strategies as a proximal process, which may be related to children’s emotion knowledge, empathy, and emotion reactivity. Because proximal processes only influence children’s development when engaged in consistently and over time, a longitudinal examination of the relations between media emotion regulation processes and emotion knowledge, empathy, and emotional reactivity is necessary. The decision to study media use for emotion regulation, emotional development, and emotional reactivity with three- to four-year-old children is particularly relevant. At this point in development, children have the ability to quite forcefully express emotions such as anger and frustration. Likewise, regulatory skills are coming online and this is a critical developmental period of the child’s development of emotional reactivity and self-regulation (Kopp, 1982; Fry & Gatzke-Kopp, 2021). However, this is also a time when parents are left with limited recommendations regarding screentime and appropriate screen usage (De Decker et al., 2012). As a result, parents may turn to media to help manage and regulate young children’s negative emotions, with little information regarding the benefits of such practices and how these behaviors influence young children’s emotional reactivity and emotional knowledge.

Media Emotion Regulation

Research has found that infants who have higher screen time struggle with emotion regulation generally (Radesky et al., 2014). Little research, however, has examined the use of media and technology as a tool to calm pre-school-aged children’s negative emotions (i.e., media emotion regulation). As was noted previously, media emotion regulation refers broadly to the use of media and technology to regulate difficult emotions (Radesky et al., 2016), such as a parent giving a crying child a tablet to calm them. This is in contrast to using media to sustain the child’s attention in order for the parent to engage in other tasks. For example, parents may use media as a babysitter (Nikken, 2018) or a distraction (Eales et al., 2021) when parents are occupied by other tasks or need temporary relief from parenting (Nikken, 2018). While researchers have begun to explore what media emotion regulation processes look like and what developmental outcomes might be affected, more research, specifically using longitudinal methods, is needed to examine the stability (or instability) of children’s media emotion regulation over time.

Recent research linked media emotion regulation practices to children’s digital dependence, also referred to as problematic media use (Domoff et al., 2020). This type of behavior in early childhood includes fixation on media, lying about or sneaking media, throwing tantrums around media, etc. Specifically, media emotion regulation was positively associated with children’s negative emotional reactivity when media was removed (a proxy measure for problematic media use), in children 2 ½ years old (Coyne et al., 2021). Another study found that mothers’ use of media emotion regulation when children were around 1 ½ years old positively predicted children’s negative emotionality a year later, though only for children who were initially low in negative emotionality (Gordon-Hacker & Gueron-Sela, 2020). No research to this point, however, has examined relations between parents’ use of media emotion regulation strategies and other aspects of children’s emotional competence, including emotion knowledge, empathy, and reactivity. As digital technologies become more common and accessible at any location and time, it is likely that media emotion regulation will become increasingly more common as a parenting tool of parents of young children. Therefore, it is critical that we understand the longitudinal associations between media emotion regulation as the development of emotion knowledge, reactivity, and empathy.

Emotion Knowledge

Emotion knowledge, or the ability to recognize emotions and their situational elicitors, is an essential component of emotional competence, or one’s ability to express, recognize, and respond to emotion in order to healthily navigate social situations (Denham & Couchoud, 1990). Emotion knowledge emerges in infancy (see Ruba & Pollak, 2020) and increases across childhood (see Woodard et al., 2021). Individual differences in emotion knowledge in childhood appear to be related to prosocial behavior (Denham, 1986), social competence in the primary school years (Halberstadt et al., 2001), and academic achievement (Denham et al., 2010). The family climate (e.g., maternal depression, attachment) is also related to children’s emotion knowledge (Raikes & Thompson, 2006). In short, improving our understanding of the development of children’s emotion knowledge is of great relevance for parents and educators.

It is possible that parental practices with media may influence the socialization of children’s emotion knowledge, though this has not yet been studied. For example, some children’s programming explicitly talks about emotion regulation strategies and models appropriate terminology (e.g., Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood; Coyne et al., 2021). However, when parents hand their children a smart device while simultaneously opting out of co-viewing the content with their children, they may forfeit an opportunity to engage in discussions regarding emotions and relevant coping strategies (e.g., emotion coaching; Denham, 2019). Of course, some parents might choose to use media as a tool to help their children process their emotions when upset, though we suspect that this practice is quite rare and that children are simply given a media device without any real emotion coaching. Thus, it stands to reason that increased regularity of such transactions may be related to decreased emotion knowledge over time. Additionally, consistent use of media to regulate children’s emotions may replace opportunities for parents to model healthy emotion regulation strategies for their children (Denham et al., 2014), which may reinforce unhealthy regulations strategies.

Empathy

Empathy is closely related to emotion knowledge yet is distinct in its focus on prosocial outcomes. Empathy is defined as a general predisposition to understand and also experience the emotional state of another individual (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990). Empathy is developed in early childhood, with even very young children showing some markers of empathy (Killen & Smetana, 2014). For example, young children begin to demonstrate empathic behaviors by reacting to the fake injuries of researchers and caregivers (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1992). Spinrad and Gal (2018) suggested that parental warmth and support of prosocial behaviors may promote children’s development of empathy. Parents who talk about emotions more with their young children (as early as 18 months) also have children who demonstrate increased levels of empathic behaviors, such as helping (Brownell et al., 2013; Drummond et al., 2014).

A few studies show that exposure to different types of media also tend to be related to empathic responding over time. Research with adolescents (13- and 14-year-olds) has found that viewing media violence tends to be related to lower levels of empathy (Krahé & Möller, 2010), while viewing prosocial media tends to be related to higher levels (Coyne, et al., 2018; Prot et al., 2014). Research with children (5–6 years old) also suggests that media does play a role in the socialization of empathy, particularly when parents are involved (Suryani et al., 2020). Thus, it is possible that parenting practices around media also impact the development of empathy during early childhood. For instance, parents who use media to regulate their child’s emotions may unintentionally communicate to their children that the sharing of their own emotions is undesirable, which may reinforce that others showing their emotions is also undesirable.

Emotional Reactivity

Emotional reactivity can be conceptualized as both a biologically based trait and an emotional competency, reflecting its temperamental foundation and susceptibility to influence from social factors. From a trait perspective, emotional reactivity is how one responds physiologically and behaviorally to the environment (see Goldsmith et al., 1987). These responses vary in both valence and intensity, with some people having intense, labile arousal in the presence of change in the environment while others have more muted responses (Rescorla et al., 2019). This variability in reactivity appears to have a biological foundation and is believed to be associated with inborn, temperamental differences (Barbosa et al., 2018; Haley & Stansbury, 2003). As a result, differences in emotional reactivity are present in infancy and early childhood (1–5 years; Groh & Narayan, 2019), persist throughout development (Lang et al., 2010), and are thought to be an important underlying component of personality (Calkins et al., 2002; Stifter & Fox, 1990).

From a competency perspective, emotional reactivity has been shown to be influenced by social factors that emphasize its manifestation and emphasis on controlling or regulating emotions. For example, though individuals across collectivist and individualistic cultures show similar patterns of physiological reactivity in response to changes in the environment, collectivist cultures, however, tend to emphasize the importance of regulating reactivity, whereas individualistic cultures may place more value on expression of negative emotions (Rescorla et al., 2019). Regardless of culture, intense emotional reactivity has been associated with a host of negative developmental outcomes for children, including poorer academic achievement (Raver et al., 2007), challenges with social functioning and peer relationships (Fry & Gatzke-Kopp, 2021), and increased aggression and externalizing behaviors (Ungvary et al., 2018). Because of the complexities around the trait and competency-like nature of children’s emotional reactivity, we will attempt to discuss our findings from both perspectives.

One under-studied area of reactivity is the complex relationship between emotion reactivity and media use in young children. Previous research has shown that parents use media to help their young children (1 ½ to 2 ½ years) manage negative emotions (Coyne et al., 2021; Gordon-Hacker & Gueron-Sela, 2020) and specifically use media to calm young children (0–7 years) when they are distressed (Nikken & Schols, 2015). Recent physiological research confirms that for some young children, educational media can be calming, yet individual differences persist (Porter et al., 2022). Thus, questions remain regarding the wisdom in using media to regulate young children’s emotions and how early media emotion regulation might relate to emotional reactivity over time during early childhood.

Covariates and Controls

There are at least two other factors related to children’s emotional competencies that merit discussion. First, parental executive functioning has been related to the development of child emotional competency over time. Specifically, there is evidence that parental executive functions are related to their children’s ability to regulate and control behavior (Deater-Deckard et al., 2013) and that parents with higher regulatory abilities have preschool-aged children who are better able to regulate in the presence of emotion (Lee et al., 2018). As a result, the current study will control for parental executive functioning. Emotional expressiveness in the family environment has also been shown to explain variability in children’s emotion knowledge across development (see Ogren & Johnson, 2020, for a review). Indeed, children’s exposure, or lack thereof, to emotions in the home appears to shape children’s ability to identify and categorize emotions. For instance, infants of depressed mothers are exposed to fewer facial expressions of emotion and consequently are less able to visually discriminate between facial expressions of emotion (Bornstein et al., 2011). Additionally, older children (average age 9) from abusive households are quicker to identify angry facial expressions compared to same-aged peers from non-abusive homes (Pollak & Kistler, 2002). Lastly, higher levels of family expressivity have been shown to be negatively related to emotion recognition, likely because children had to work harder to decode less expressive family members’ emotions and thus became more proficient at decoding emotions in general (see Halberstadt & Eaton, 2002). Thus, accounting for family emotional expressiveness is important to consider when examining variability in children’s emotion knowledge. Accordingly, the current study will control for emotional expression in the home in all analyzes.

Current Study

We examined how parents’ use of media emotion regulation was longitudinally associated with children’s emotion knowledge, empathy, and emotion reactivity across a 1-year period during early childhood (from ages 3.5–4.5 approximately), while controlling for parental executive functioning and level of emotional expressivity within the home. We examine these relationships over time given that there is great emotion development over the course of early childhood (Denham et al., 2003; Walle & Campos, 2012) and media emotion regulation practices may have a particular impact over time in this age group (Coyne et al., 2021). Furthermore, examining these processes over time allows us to examine directionality, as highly reactive children with low empathy and emotional knowledge may more frequently in the future be given phones to regulate their emotions. This method also allows us to examine bidirectional relationships, which might represent a downward spiral emotion process over time (Slater et al., 2003).

We hypothesized that higher levels of media emotion regulation were associated with higher levels of reactivity (H1), poorer emotional knowledge (H2), and lower empathy at the cross sectional level (H3) and across time (H4). Given the longitudinal nature of the data, we were also able to explore the converse relationship. Thus, we wondered if these relationships are bi-directional and hypothesized that higher levels of Wave 1 reactivity (H5), poorer emotional knowledge (H6), and lower empathy (H7) would be associated with higher media emotion regulation one year later. Finally, we explored Wave 1 emotional reactivity as a potential moderator of longitudinal relations between Wave 1 media emotion regulation and Wave 2 emotion knowledge and empathy, as parents of more reactive children might have more opportunities to give their child a device to regulate their emotions. Additionally, it is possible that media emotion regulation might be more impactful on later outcomes for children that have high emotional reactivity compared to those with low, given that emotional reactivity tends to be associated with worse outcomes for children in general (e.g., Ungvary et al., 2018).

Methods

We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures in the study.

Participants

The participants for this study were taken from Project M.E.D.I.A., an ongoing, longitudinal study of child development in a media saturated world. In 2017 (wave 1) 500 primary caregivers and their infants under the age of one were recruited for participation in this study. Participants were recruited through mailers sent to the participant home through the Colorado Office of Health and Vital Records, which identified all in the local area who had given birth in the past year (27.5% of the 500 families). Research assistants visited potential participants’ homes to invite participation. Sixty-six percent of participants who research assistants were able to reach at home and had a child in the home under the age of one participated in Wave 1 of Project M.E.D.I.A. Participants were also recruited using additional methods, including flyers in pediatrician offices, free clinics, social services offices, businesses focused on entertainment for young children, public parks and play spaces, and referral from a friend who participated (22.7%). Finally, 49.8% of the sample was recruited through an external data collection company.

In Wave 2 (2018), 250 primary caregiver-infant dyads were stratified randomly selected based on household income, such that all households that reported a combined household income below $50,000 in 2017 (N = 169) were all invited to participate in an in-home visit in 2018. Participants who reported a household income above $50,000 were stratified based on income brackets and a subset of these participants were randomly selected to be include in the in-home portion of the study in 2018 (N = 83). When participants in the stratified groups declined participation (2.66%), another primary caregiver-infant dyad from the same strata was randomly selected and invited participate in the in-home assessment. Additionally, 19 new low-income primary caregiver-infant dyads (household income below $50,000) were recruited for participation in Project M.E.D.I.A. using mailers sent to the participants’ home through the Colorado Office of Health and Vital Records, which identified anyone in the local area who had given birth between 1 and 2 years ago. We utilized Wave 4 (2020) and Wave 5 (2021) for the current study (when we introduced media emotion regulation into the in-home battery of tasks). Retention rates for in-home participants from Wave 1 to Wave 5 were 89%. Additionally, retention rate was 94% between Waves 4 and 5.

The final sample for this paper included these 269 child-parent dyads (M age at Wave 4 = 41.17 months SD = 3.06 months, M age at wave 5 = 53.22 months, SD = 3.14 months; 130 female, 132 male, 7 did not report gender). Primary caregivers were primarily female (96%), approximately 3% Asian, 9% Black, 21% Hispanic, 59% White, 1% Mixed Race, and 6% “Other.”. Approximately 72.8% of primary caregivers were married, 13% were single-never married, 10% had an unmarried partner living with them, 2% were divorced, and 2% were separated from their partner. Approximately 17.3% of primary caregivers had completed High School or equivalent or less, 32.5% had completed some college or a vocational degree, 32% had completed a bachelor’s degree, 18% had completed a graduate degree. In terms of income, Household income was as follows: 30.5% below $30,000, 25.8% $30,000 to below $50,000, 26.7% from $50,000 to below $80,000, 12.2% $80,000 to below $100,000, and 4.7% more than $100,000. Lastly, approximately 26.3% of participants received public assistance at the time of data collection, 4.9% received public assistance in the past year, but were not currently receiving public assistance, and 18.5% had received public assistance in the past, but not in the last year.

Procedure

Wave 4 of Project M.E.D.I.A. was collected in 2020 during the COVID-19 global pandemic. As a result, all in-home appointments were conducted via Zoom. Participant families were mailed paper packets with study materials before appointments. Primary caregivers provided informed consent and were compensated with a $200 gift card and an additional $25 for full participation of all tasks of the in-home. Additionally, participants completed an online questionnaire through Qualtrics. Participants were compensated $50 in Visa or Amazon gift cards for completing the online survey. All participants were proficient in English. All procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board at Brigham Young University [review application number F16089 titled Project M.E.D.I.A.]. Wave 5 was conducted in family homes for in-home tasks and online for all questionnaire data. For simplicity, we will refer to these waves as Wave 1 and Wave 2 throughout the rest of the paper.

Measures

Media Emotion Regulation (Wave 1 and 2).

Parental use of media to help their child regulate their moods and emotions was assessed using a seven-item media emotion regulation scale (Coyne, et al., 2021). Parents were asked to rate how often they engage in a series of activities regarding using media to manage their child’s emotions and moods on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (Never) to 5 (Always). Example items include, “How often do you pass your child your phone or other media device when your child gets fussy while driving somewhere in the car?”, and “When at restaurants and your child begins to get fussy, how often do you allow your child to play with your phone or another media device to help him/her calm himself/herself down?” Items were averaged and higher scores indicate more media use to regulate emotion and mood. The scale showed adequate reliability at both waves (Wave 1 α = .87; Wave 2 α = .86).

Emotional Reactivity (Waves 1 and 2).

Emotional reactivity was measured using the 9-item emotionally reactive subscale of the Child Behavior Checklist 1 ½ - 5 (CBCL 1 ½−5; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). Parents responded on a three-point Likert-type scale from 0 (Not true, as far as you know) and 2 (Very true or often true). Example items include, “Rapid shifts between sadness and excitement,” “Sudden changes in mood or feelings,” and “Sulks a lot.” Items in each scale are summed and scores are normed in comparison to nationally representative datasets of children the same age (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). Higher scores indicate greater behavior problems in each category. The CBCL 1 ½ - 5 is a widely used parental report measure of children’s behavior and has been widely used and validated (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). Reliability was moderate for both waves: Wave 1 α = .61; Wave 2 α = .65.

Emotion Knowledge (Waves 1 and 2).

Child affective knowledge was assessed using the Affective Knowledge Test (AKT; Denham, 1986). This task is designed to assess children’s emotion knowledge using puppets and four felt faces that depict four basic emotions: happy, sad, angry, and afraid. The task is divided into two portions. In the labeling portion of the task (8 items) children were asked to identify through verbally naming (expressive knowledge) and nonverbally pointing to the faces (receptive knowledge). Then children were presented with 20 vignettes that were enacted with puppets. The puppet and the puppeteer provided vocal and visual affective cues to the child. To measure children’s stereotypical emotional knowledge, 8 of the vignettes portrayed the puppet responding in an expected manner (e.g., happiness at receiving an ice cream cone). In the remaining 12 vignettes, children’s non-stereotypical emotional knowledge was assessed by having the puppet respond in a way that was not typical of the child in a similar situation. Parents reported on their child’s typical feelings toward situations before the start of the task (e.g., would your child be happy or afraid to see a big happy dog?) and the puppets behaved in the opposite fashion. Six of the vignettes displayed positively-valenced emotions and 6 of the vignettes displayed negatively-valenced emotions. Children pointed to the corresponding felt face to answer (forced choice). Children received 2 points for correctly identifying emotion in any section of the measure and 1 point for identifying the correct valence but not the correct emotion (e.g., sad for afraid). A total summed score was used, with higher scores representing better emotional knowledge.

The AKT was conducted via Zoom during Wave 1 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and was conducted in person for Wave 2 using the standard procedure (e.g., Denham, 1986). Pilot testing revealed that it was difficult for children to easily indicate their response on a screen. Thus, we mailed families copies of the felt faces so that children could indicate their responses to each AKT question by pointing at the corresponding copy of the felt face on “their end” of the Zoom interaction. Parents were instructed how to orient and order the copies of the faces for each phase of the task and they assisted with the camera angle needed to observe the children’s responses. Parents were also carefully instructed to not influence their child’s response.

Empathy (Waves 1 and 2).

Child’s empathy was assessed using the Empathy subscale of the Brief Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA, Briggs-Gowan et al., 2013). This seven-item subscale had parents assess their children’s behavior over the last month on a three-point scale from 1 (Not true/Rarely true) to 3 (Very true/Often true). Scores are averaged and higher scores indicate greater empathy by the child. The scale showed adequate reliability for both waves (Wave 1 α = .73; Wave 2 α = .76). Example items include, “tries to make you feel better when you are upset,” and “talks about other people’s feelings (like ‘Mommy mad’).”

Parental Executive Functions (Wave 1).

Parental executive functions were assessed using WebEXEC (Buchanan et al., 2010), a six-item public domain, self-report measure of executive functions specifically designed for internet administration. Executive function describes several related higher order processes, including planning, impulse control, working memory, task coordination, and attention. Participants indicated how much difficulty they have with activities on a four-point Likert scale from 1 (No problems) to 4 (A great many problems experienced). Higher scores indicate poorer executive functions. Example items include, “Do you find it difficult to keep your attention on a particular task?” and “Do you find yourself acting on “impulse?” Reliability was acceptable (α = .87).

Self-Expression in the Family (Wave 1).

Parents reported on their expressiveness in the family using a modified version of the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ, Halberstadt et al., 1995). Parents responded to ten items on a six-point Likert-type scale from 1 (Never) to 6 (Very frequently). Two broad sub scales of positive (six items) and negative emotionality (four items) are created for this measure. For positive emotional expression, example items include, “praise someone for good work,” and, “express excitement over your future plans.” For negative emotional expression, example items include, “express anger at someone else’s carelessness,” and, “express disappointment over something that didn’t work out.” Scores are averages and higher scores indicate increased positive or negative emotional expressivity within the family. Both scales showed acceptable reliability (positive ɑ = .84, negative ɑ = .70).

Analytic Strategy

We used a cross-lag panel path model to examine whether early emotion media regulation predicted later emotional reactivity, emotional knowledge, and empathy. We also examined whether these emotional processes in children predicted later media emotion regulation by parents. Controls included age, parental executive functioning and emotional expression in the home, all of which are related to emotional competencies. We also explored Wave 1 emotional reactivity as a potential moderator of the longitudinal relations between Wave 1 media emotion regulation and Wave 2 emotion knowledge and empathy, as parents’ use of media emotion regulation may depend on the reactivity of their child.

Transparency and Openness.

Hypotheses were pre-registered on the Open Science Foundation (OSF) network (doi: https://osf.io/7v3nh/). Data are available on OSF and all statistics are available in the supplementary material (Coyne & Reschke, 2022). Data were analyzed using Mplus (version 8.8).

Results

Preliminary Analysis

Bivariate correlations were conducted for all major variables (see Table 1). There were significant positive correlations between all Wave 1 variables and their associated Wave 2 counterparts. Additionally, there were significant concurrent positive correlations between media emotion regulation and emotional reactivity at both waves, but no significant associations over time. Additionally, media emotion regulation at both waves was significantly negatively correlated with emotion knowledge at both waves and empathy at Wave 1 only. These mostly confirm hypotheses, at least at the bivariate level. There was also a strong positive correlation between media emotion regulation at both waves. Table 2 shows means and standard deviations for all major variables. There were significant decreases across waves for media emotion regulation, t = 2.89, p = .004, Cohen’s d = .57, and emotion reactivity, t = 5.40, p < .001, Cohen’s d = .39. Cohen’s d = .57. There was also a significant increase in emotion knowledge across waves, t = 12.47, p < .001, Cohen’s d = 1.00. Children’s empathy across waves did not differ significantly, t = 1.93, p = .06, Cohen’s d = .13.

Table 1:

Bivariate correlations between major variables

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. Media emotion regulation (1) --
2. Media emotion regulation (2) .70*** --
3. Emotional reactivity (1) .14* .12 --
4. Emotional reactivity (2) .11 .15** .53*** --
5. Empathy (1) −.22*** −.18** .01 −.07 --
6. Empathy (2) .02 .01 −.01 −.04 .37*** --
7. Emotion knowledge (1) −.27*** −.23** .07 −.08 .31*** .04 --
8. Emotion knowledge (2) −.14 −.15* −.01 −.05 .21** .07 .47*** --
9. Parent executive functioning (1) .18** .10 .30*** .37*** .01 −.05 .04 .01 --
10. Parent positive expression in home (1) −.24*** −.25*** −.01 −.05 .32*** .17* .13 .07 .08 --
11. Parent negative expression in home (1) −.08 −.08 −.08 −.11 .07 .11 .07 .11 −.02 .04 --
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Note: p<.05*, p<.01**, p<.001***; Numbers after the variable name indicates the Wave of measurement

Table 2:

Means and Standard Deviations for Major Variables

Wave 1 Wave 2 Range
Variables M SD M SD
Media emotion regulation 2.07 .76 1.93 .74 1–5
Emotional reactivity 10.98 2.04 10.00 1.95 0–18
Empathy 2.68 .30 2.63 .33 1–3
Emotion knowledge 44.88 9.99 50.33 5.81 0–56
Parent executive functioning 1.98 .62 -- -- 1–4
Parent positive expression in home 5.07 .73 -- -- 1–6
Parent negative expression in home 3.38 .64 1–6
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Note: M age at Wave 1 = 41.17 months SD = 3.06 months, M age at wave 2 = 53.22 months, SD = 3.14 months

Main Analysis

A cross lagged panel model was constructed in Mplus (version 8.8), modelling media emotion regulation, emotional reactivity, empathy, and emotion knowledge as bi-directional predictors at both Wave 1 and 2. Child age, parental executive functioning, and both negative and positive expressiveness in the home (at Wave 1) were used as covariates in the model. Additionally, an interaction term was created between Wave 1 media emotion regulation and emotional reactivity to explore the potential moderating influence of Wave 1 emotional reactivity on longitudinal relations between Wave 1 media emotion regulation and Wave 2 emotion knowledge and empathy. Not all variables were normally distributed, thus we used the maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors which tends to be more suitable for skewed data. The final model was saturated so fit statistics are not provided (See Figure 1 for model).

Figure 1:

Figure 1:

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Cross-lag panel model of media emotion regulation and emotional outcomes

Notes: Standardized values are shown. Covariates (child age, parental executive functioning, and expressiveness in the home) are not shown in the model for parsimony. All additional statistics can be found in the supplementary material.

*p < .05; **p < .01, ***p < .001

At the cross-sectional level, higher levels of media emotion regulation was significantly related to lower levels of emotion knowledge, β = −.27, p < .001 and empathy, β = −.22, p < .001, but higher emotional reactivity, β = .15, p = 03, all at Wave 1. However, these same cross-sectional associations were not found at Wave 2.

At the longitudinal level, early media emotion regulation (Wave 1) was not longitudinally related to later emotional reactivity, β = −.04, p = .52, or emotion knowledge, β = −.01, p = .94. However, Wave 1 media emotion regulation was related to higher levels of Wave 2 empathy, β = .15, p = .03. Additionally, early emotional reactivity, β = .03, p = .66, emotional knowledge, β = −.07, p = .27, and empathy, β = .01, p = .95, at Wave 1 were not significantly associated with later media emotion regulation at Wave 2. Emotional reactivity at Wave 1 did not moderate the relation between Wave 1 media emotion regulation and Wave 2 emotion knowledge, β = −.04, p = .62, or empathy, β = .04, p = .49. There were strong, significant stability effects between waves for media emotion regulation, β = .67, p < .001, emotional reactivity, β = .46, p < .001, emotion knowledge, β = .44, p < .001, and empathy, β < .39, p < .001. There were also a number of additional significant findings for covariates and all results can be found in the supplementary materials.

Discussion

This study examined how media emotion regulation related to three emotional competencies for young children, namely emotion knowledge, empathy, and emotional reactivity. Based on Bronfenbrenner’s PPCT model (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000), we hypothesized that parents’ use of media emotion regulation would influence children’s emotional reactivity, emotion knowledge, and empathy. We also explored the converse, that early emotional processes would be related to later media emotion regulation. Finally, we explored child emotional reactivity at Wave 1 as a potential moderator of any longitudinal relations between Wave 1 media emotion regulation and children’s emotion knowledge and empathy at Wave 2. Our hypotheses were mostly unsupported at the longitudinal level (though there was some support at the cross-sectional level) and we discuss each result in turn.

Emotion Knowledge

The larger model revealed complex and somewhat nuanced results. At the cross-sectional level at Wave 1, media emotion regulation was associated with worse emotional knowledge for children. Thus, there is some evidence that greater media emotion regulation may perhaps limit opportunities for children to learn how to label and process their own emotions in the moment. Parents may use a media device to regulate their child’s emotions when dysregulated as opposed to engaging in discussion that might foster increased emotional understanding. This might displace the use of behavior such as emotion coaching, which has been shown to be a strong predictor of emotion understanding (Denham, 2019).

However, these effects did not bear out over time, meaning that early media emotion regulation did not predict later emotion knowledge. Thus, the effects are limited in nature and not likely to be related to less emotion knowledge over time (at least across one year). Further, early emotion knowledge was not related to later media emotion regulation, suggesting that a lack of emotion knowledge in children may not lead parents to provide media devices to regulate child emotion over time.

There may also be other factors more influential than media emotion regulation that better explain variability in older children’s emotion knowledge that were unaccounted for in our model and might explain the lack of a direct longitudinal effect. For instance, prior work has demonstrated that attachment security with the mother can explain individual differences in children’s emotion knowledge, though this may be limited to children’s understanding of negative emotions (Laible & Thompson, 1998; Raikes & Thompson, 2006). Additionally, the percentage of children in the United States who attend daycare or preschool increases significantly from prior to 3 years of age and beyond. Thus, parents’ use of media emotion regulation may be more influential on children’s emotion knowledge when parents represent children’s primary source of emotion socialization and is less influential when children have frequent opportunities to learn about emotions from non-parental sources who are less likely to use media to regulate children’s emotions (Ogren & Johnson, 2020; Rogoff, 2003). It remains an open question, however, whether educators’ use of media emotion regulation is similarly linked to children’s emerging emotion knowledge. This study does point to an important direction for future research. It will be important for future researchers to examine the associations between media emotion regulation and children’s emerging regulatory skills, including emotion regulation. We have hypothesized that media emotion regulation may displace important parental coaching regarding regulatory skills. However, the current study did not directly access the influence of media emotion regulation on young children’s emerging regulatory skills.

Empathy

We also found that early media emotion regulation (W1) was directly associated with more empathy one year later (W2) while controlling for earlier levels of empathy (W1) (as opposed to the converse direction). Simply put, the more parents used media to help their children emotionally regulate, the more empathy their children expressed. This finding went against our hypotheses and was somewhat surprising, yet we offer a few speculations for this result. First, given the lack of longitudinal associations at the bivariate level, this finding may simply represent a suppression effect in the model and there may be no real relationship between media emotion regulation and empathy over time. Indeed, we found that opposite direction at the cross-sectional level in the model (i.e., higher media emotion regulation was negatively associated with empathy). We hope future research examines these variables over time in order to replicate this particular result since the direction appears to be quite inconsistent.

If there is a real relationship between emotion regulation and empathy over time, there may be a few possibilities for the positive direction. For example, our empathy measure included items associated with global prosocial behavior (i.e., “tries to make you feel better when you are upset”). Research has shown that modeling (by parents) is critical in the developing of prosocial behavior (Schuhmacher et al., 2019). It is possible that parents’ media emotion regulation may also function to demonstrate emotional responsivity towards the child, which may facilitate children’s internalization of an empathic disposition towards others in distress (Thompson & Newton, 2013).

We also wonder if the content of the media given may offer a clue into this association. If parents are giving their children media that is highly prosocial, educational, and even models empathic behavior (like Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood), this may increase empathy over time (Rasmussen et al., 2016). However, the effect would likely be weakened if children were viewing non-educational or violent content when upset. We did not measure the content that is generally consumed by children during a media emotion regulation episode, but other research suggests that most programs directed toward this particular age are highly prosocial and educational (Coyne et al., 2022). We hope future research explores media content as a possible mechanism between media emotion regulation and empathy development across early childhood. As this is a relatively weak (and inconsistent) finding, we offer this description as a possible explanation of our finding rather than as a recommendation for a way to increase children’s empathy.

Emotional Reactivity

At the cross-sectional level, we found that higher levels of media emotion regulation were associated with higher emotional reactivity (at Wave 1), though there was no cross-sectional relation at Wave 2. At this level, it is difficult to know the direction of the results. From a trait perspective of emotional reactivity, children who are highly reactive may simply be given media devices more regularly to attempt to control their emotions. Alternatively, from a competency perspective, parents’ use of media emotion regulation might increase child reactivity across development as children receive fewer opportunities to learn how to regulate their own emotions without media. However, neither argument was supported when examined longitudinally, both at the bivariate level and in the larger model. Thus, early media emotion regulation does not appear to significantly contribute to emotional reactivity over time. This is particularly notable given that parents engaged in significantly higher levels of media emotion regulation at Wave 1 than at Wave 2 (see Table 2), a possible reflection of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also important to note that the decrease in media emotion regulation across waves in our sample could also be a reflection of children’s decrease in emotion reactivity observed during the same time (see Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). Thus, a greater share of parents may have had less reactive children and therefore fewer opportunities to need to use media emotion regulation. Regardless, additional research is needed to confirm these findings due to the possible influence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, whether early media emotion regulation is related to emotional competencies across later childhood and into adulthood is unknown and we hope researchers continue to examine long-term effects of media related parenting practices.

We also wondered if early emotional reactivity would be associated with later media emotion regulation, as researchers have long recognized the bidirectional nature of parenting and child temperament (Lengua & Kovacs, 2005). Indeed, there is some evidence that having a difficult temperament might be cross-sectionally associated with using media to manage emotions (Coyne et al., 2021). However, this was also not supported in the main analysis.

Context and Limitations

When examining these findings, it is important acknowledge the crucial contextual factor of the Covid-19 pandemic during which this study took place. The Covid pandemic forced parents to bring both the office and the classroom into the walls of their homes. With recreation centers and social spaces closed, many young children were only able to socialize with and be influenced by other household members. The Covid pandemic restrictions were prominent when these data were collected (W1 collected in 2020 and W2 collected in 2021) and young children developing during the Covid years are likely unique compared to young children prior to Covid (Benner & Mistry, 2020). While the world experienced many travesties and hardships, families, especially those with young preschool aged children, faced unique stressors, perhaps due to the sensitivity of the development that occurs for young children (Kalil et al., 2020).

Although this current study contributes important information in understanding media emotion regulation and children’s emotional reactivity and knowledge, it is not without its limitations. First, some of the measures relied on parental reports. Past research has reported this method to be less accurate due to a distortion of parent’s views when reporting their own and their children’s behavior (Knack et al., 2021). It is possible that when parents were asked to report on a behavior that may generally be viewed negatively within society, they may have been more inclined to alter their reports so that they may not accurately reflect behavior. Future research should consider using direct observations and other methods to help mitigate this limitation.

Another limitation was the sample. Specifically, the sample size was only moderate, with approximately 63% of the participants being White. It is also important to note that the entire sample consisted of participants living within the United States. A larger sample may allow for more sophisticated modeling. Additionally, differences within cultures may have impacted how media emotion regulation is used within families and in turn perhaps result in different findings. Future studies should consider collecting a larger sample size and sampling participants from other countries. The sample also tended to be rather high functioning, with parent media emotion being quite low overall and with parents show generally high executive functioning and with children showing high empathy and high emotional knowledge, particularly at the final time point. More variability in the media emotion regulation variable may show more nuanced results particularly over time. Additionally, the reliability for emotional reactivity was only moderate. Thus, this variable should be viewed with some caution. We also did not examine what exactly children were viewing when they were given a device to regulate emotion. If they were viewing high quality, educational content, it may have a vastly different effect than low-quality non-educational programming (e.g., Coyne, et al., 2023). Finally, though our assessment of emotion knowledge has been well established in the literature (Denham, 1986), an assessment with open-ended questions may more accurately capture children’s emotion knowledge (Russell, 1993).

Conclusion

Overall, these findings suggest that many parents used media as an emotion regulation strategy with their young children. The results were mixed. At the cross-sectional level, these practices were associated with poorer child emotion outcomes including lower levels of emotion knowledge and empathy and higher levels of emotional reactivity. However, early media emotion regulation was only longitudinally related to higher levels of empathy in children (and this may be a suppression effect).

Though media emotion regulation appears to be related to emotional development in nuanced ways, these results are somewhat contradictory, and we may need to examine these associations across childhood to better understand how these indicators of emotional competencies are related. Parents are increasingly using media as a means to help young children regulate negative emotions. While the current study is an important first step, much more research is needed to examine the longitudinal associations between media emotion regulation, emotion knowledge, and emerging empathy in early childhood. Future researchers should continue this important line of research so parents, policy makers, educators, and practitioners can make evidence-based recommendations regarding the use of media as a tool for managing young children’s strong negative emotions.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental Material

Acknowledgments

This project was funded in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (R15HD101969).

We also thank the School of Family Life, and the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at BYU, and recognize the generous support of the many private donors who provided assistance for this project. We also thank those families who were willing to spend valuable hours with our team in interviews and the many students who assisted in conducting the interviews. Finally, we thank Nona Evelyn Brown for inspiring this research.

Footnotes

The authors declare no conflict of interest

This study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework. Study information (including data) can be found at the following: doi: osf.io/7v3nh

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