I saw something this morning. A child, perhaps two or three, was sitting in a pushchair. The mother had handed over a mobile. The moment she took it back, the child erupted into a tantrum that could have rattled the windows.
To many in the room, this was just a scene of everyday parenting. A trick to keep a little one quiet, followed by the inevitable storm when the trick wore off. But what I saw was a live experiment in conditioning. Hand child glowing screen, receive silence. Remove glowing screen, receive screams. The child’s developing brain is learning very quickly that this rectangle is the magic key to calm, to stimulation, to dopamine.
From a psychological point of view, the risk is clear. A two-year-old does not yet have the neural wiring to regulate emotions. That capacity is still under construction, built through face-to-face interaction, comfort, play and exploration. When a mobile takes that role, it acts as both pacifier and substitute parent. The short-term effect is quiet. The long-term effect may be poor attention control, difficulty with delayed gratification, and reduced resilience.
Add to this the behavioural pattern being rehearsed. The tantrum is not random. It is the child’s nervous system in panic at losing a source of high-intensity stimulation. That is reinforcement at its purest. The more often it happens, the stronger the association becomes. A child learns to escalate, the parent learns to surrender, and both end up tethered to a device.
The humour in all this is bitter. We would never hand a toddler a can of energy drink and say “there you go, that will soothe you.” Yet hand over a phone streaming flashing cartoons and the room nods in approval. We are effectively giving a toddler a slot machine and wondering why their behaviour becomes erratic when the lever is taken away.
And then there is the unspoken concern that people brush aside because it feels too inconvenient. Radiation. The World Health Organization may say the data are not conclusive, but even they admit that prolonged exposure to radiofrequency radiation from mobiles is “possibly carcinogenic.” Adults are advised to use hands-free devices. Yet a toddler with a skull thinner than an eggshell is often allowed to “play” with wifi devices near their head for an hour. If we are cautious about microwaves and sunbeds, perhaps we should at least be cautious about this.
The point is not to shame parents. It is hard work raising a child in a world built for distraction. But we must not mistake silence for wellbeing. A child’s brain needs conversation, play, touch, and exploration far more than it needs a glowing rectangle. We would do well to remember that tantrums are not solved by technology. They are solved by patience, consistency, and teaching the little brain how to weather frustration.
The mobile phone is not a toy, nor a comfort blanket. It is a tool designed to capture and monetise attention. When that tool is placed in the hands of a two-year-old, the consequences may not be visible straight away. But as any psychologist will tell you, what is being wired in during those years can echo across a lifetime.
My take away from today’s parenting together with a comment from a chat room that no parent should be berated for their parenting methods, especially if the child has issues:
People don’t see the danger because the phone isn’t labelled “Warning: May Rot Developing Brain” in red letters. It’s small, shiny, glows like a toy, and best of all, it shuts the child up. To the casual bystander it looks like parenting genius, not a red flag.
The irony? If the same parent handed that two-year-old a pint of lager or a lit cigarette the room would gasp. But a device that hijacks dopamine pathways, scrambles sleep, and replaces human connection is perfectly acceptable, even applauded as “keeping them occupied.”
It’s modern pacification, gift-wrapped in glass and pixels. And everyone is too busy scrolling their own screens to notice the toddler learning the same habit before they’ve even mastered cutlery.
