Your 23-month-old watched 15 minutes of nursery rhymes. You took the iPad away. What followed was 10 minutes of full-body protest — floor, tears, the works. You're now wondering whether something is actually wrong, or whether you're watching a toddler be a toddler.
Both things are happening. The research makes that uncomfortable but clear.
Explanation 1: It's Normal Protest
The simplest explanation is also supported by evidence. Kids that age can't yet separate "I want this to continue" from "I am being harmed." Ending something enjoyable triggers a protest response. That's developmental, not pathological.
The Hiniker et al. (2016) study is the most useful data point here. Across 55 families with toddlers and preschoolers, 93% of parents reported their children had resisted when screen time ended at least occasionally — which is basically everyone. The more interesting finding: children were less upset when a device auto-stopped than when a parent turned it off. The mechanism matters. What's triggering the meltdown isn't just losing the screen — it's the perceived removal of control, specifically the experience of someone else ending it.
That's a normal protest signature. Not every transition meltdown is a symptom.
Explanation 2: It's Real Dysregulation
The counterargument has considerably more research behind it, and it cuts deeper.
Coyne et al. (2021) followed 269 toddlers aged 2-3 and found that higher reliance on media to regulate emotion was directly associated with more extreme negative reactions when screens were removed — and with more problematic media use overall. Children with higher baseline negative affect were especially vulnerable to this pattern. That's not a protest; that's a feedback loop.
A follow-up study by Coyne et al. (2022) used ecological momentary assessment — checking in with 243 parent-child dyads multiple times a day across a full week — and found meaningful within-person fluctuations in distress during screen transitions. Critically, most of the variability was within the same child on different days, not between children. A child's energetic mood state before screen use predicted an easier transition away. This means the problem isn't a fixed trait of your kid — it's situational, and it's modifiable.
Oflu et al. (2021) found that preschoolers with 4 or more hours of daily screen time had significantly higher emotional lability and negativity scores compared to lower-use peers. The effect was amplified when there was no parental co-viewing — passive solo screen time being the stronger driver.
And the longitudinal picture from Vasconcellos et al. (2025) — a meta-analysis of 117 longitudinal studies with more than 292,000 participants — confirmed a bidirectional relationship: screen use predicted later socioemotional difficulties (effect size b = 0.06), and socioemotional difficulties predicted more screen use. The effects are small individually. The directionality is concerning.
The connection to broader emotional development is direct: the research on what builds self-esteem in toddlers shows that effortful control and the experience of agency are core to how a child's sense of capability forms — and both are quietly shaped by what happens during these early emotional moments.
Where This Actually Lands
Both explanations are operating simultaneously. The Hiniker finding tells you that control loss is a real trigger and that the how of stopping matters. The Coyne, Oflu, and Vasconcellos data tell you that heavy reliance on screens for emotional regulation leaves toddlers with a thinner self-regulation baseline over time.
The more important finding is the one from Konok et al. (2024), which tracked families longitudinally and found that parents using digital devices specifically to calm tantrums predicted poorer effortful control and anger management in those children over time. Not concurrent. Over time. Screens used as a soothing tool suppress the emotional signal rather than building the capacity to manage it.
Radesky & Christakis (2016), reviewing the existing evidence, described the dynamic: children who habitually use screens as an emotion-regulation tool miss the developmental opportunities to build internal coping strategies. The difficult-temperament child is more likely to get handed a screen to calm down, which makes internal regulation harder to develop, which makes the screen harder to take away.
This is one of the most load-bearing feedback loops in early development. In Imprint's Emotional Wellbeing dimension, effortful control — the ability to manage attention and emotion in the face of frustration — is one of the traits we track most carefully, because it predicts outcomes across nearly every other domain for years afterward. A Steady Learner who tends toward high negative affect needs a more structured transition routine than a Balanced Explorer, and getting that right early shapes the whole regulatory arc.
The practical implication isn't about cutting screen time. It's about when and why screens appear.
Don't introduce the screen when your child is already dysregulated. The moment the screen becomes the thing that ends a meltdown, you've established it as the regulation tool — and you've made every future removal harder. Use it when the kid is already calm. And have a consistent, predictable off-routine: a verbal warning a few minutes before, a short transition activity, the same language each time. The Coyne EMA data supports this: a child in a positive emotional state before screen use transitions off more easily. You're not just managing the exit — you're managing the entry.
The question isn't whether to let a 23-month-old watch 15 minutes of something. The question is whether the screen is doing the parenting when emotions are high. That's the thing to watch.
