This article was written by Madeline Holcombe in CNN:

It’s late, dinner is just now on the stove, your phone is ringing, and your child’s tantrum begins. A little screen time almost always works to calm them down.

Tempting as it may be to hand them a smartphone or turn on the TV as a default response, soothing with digital devices may lead to more problems with emotional reactivity down the road, a new study has shown.

“Even slightly increasing a child’s emotional reactivity, that just means it’s more likely when one of those daily frustrations comes up, you’re more likely to get a bigger reaction,” said lead study author Dr. Jenny Radesky, a developmental behavioral pediatrician.

Researchers looked at 422 parent and caregiver responses to assess how likely they were to utilize devices for distraction and how dysregulated their 3- to 5-year-old child’s behavior was over a six-month period, according to the study published Monday in the JAMA Pediatrics.

Frequently using digital devices to distract from unpleasant and disruptive behavior like tantrums was associated with more emotional dysregulation in kids - particularly boys and children who were already struggling with emotional regulation, according to the study.

“When you see your 3- to 5-year-old having a tough emotional moment, meaning they are screaming and crying about something, they’re getting frustrated, they might be hitting or kicking or lying on the floor. … If your go-to strategy is to distract them or get them to be quiet by using media, then this study suggests that is not helping them in the long term,” said Radesky, associate professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School.

There are two problems with distracting with media: It takes away an opportunity to teach the child about how to respond to difficult emotions, and it can reinforce that big displays of their difficult emotions are effective ways to get what they want, Radesky said.

“I’m just going to show big emotions so we can stop what we’re doing, and I can escape this demand,” she said.

The study lines up with the current recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the World Health Organization that children ages 2 to 5 should have very limited screen time, said Dr. Joyce Harrison, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Harrison, who was not involved in the study, said that although there were limitations to the diversity of the participants, it was well designed and is supported by the existing research.