Does the smartphone reduce frustration tolerance?

Many children are bad losers - and are enthusiastic about smartphones and the like. However, there is a lot to suggest that media use reduces children's frustration tolerance even further. What should parents bear in mind when it comes to media education?
Text: Kathrin Blum

Picture: iStock

Eleven-year-old David angrily wipes the pieces off the board when he doesn't win the game, while his sister Sophia, who is two years younger, rushes out of the room and slams the door. Many children are bad losers. And some parents would rather let their offspring win than deal with their sons' and daughters' frustration - regardless of whether it's about the dice game or how much time they spend on their smartphone. There is some evidence to suggest that intensive smartphone use lowers the frustration tolerance of children and young people. And they become even worse losers as a result.
Etienne Bütikofer wanted his three children to learn early on how to deal with disappointment and train their frustration tolerance. That's why the lecturer and media educator at the Bern University of Teacher Education never simply let them win. He also believes it is important that children learn to cope with victories and not become arrogant when they win.

Children unlearn to be patient

For children growing up today, the game partner is often virtual, the playing cards the display. Gaming via mobile phone overrides many (game) rules: if you lose, you click or swipe once and simply start all over again. «Never before have there been games where you could go back to zero so quickly,» says Etienne Bütikofer. This teaches children to endure losing - and to work hard to achieve something.
It's not just gaming that helps to reduce frustration tolerance. Whether it's keeping in touch with friends anytime and anywhere or streaming films and music around the clock: «With the smartphone, all needs can be met very quickly and with minimal effort,» says Sara Signer. The research assistant for media education at the Zurich University of Teacher Education believes that children are forgetting how to be patient as a result.

Many adults are overwhelmed

Signer believes it is extremely important to practise targeted waiting, even if it is challenging for parents. «I always provoke waiting,» explains Signer, who has a six-year-old daughter. For her, this also means that parents don't drop everything when the mobile phone rings or beeps. «Many interrupt conversations or what they are doing and immediately jump up when the smartphone rings,» observes Signer. Most adults don't realise what they are showing their children. «There's rarely any malicious intent behind it; it's more the case that many adults are also overwhelmed by their smartphones,» says Signer.
Bütikofer gives parents credit: «When they were children themselves, it didn't exist, they didn't learn how to use it and they first have to find their own way around it.» And he recommends that parents try it out for themselves. In his opinion, they should download a few games themselves, try them out and possibly find out for themselves how hard it is to get away from them.

This harms in the long term

Regardless of their own experiences, mums and dads should keep a close eye on their children when they use their smartphones, advises teacher and author Philippe Wampfler. Parents should ask themselves: What is happening, how does the child react when they are on the device? And if they have the feeling that the children are still irritable half an hour or a whole hour after smartphone time (because they want to go back to the virtual world), mums and dads should seek a conversation and explain to the children: «This will harm you in the long term!»
Intensive use often coincides with puberty, so in many cases it is difficult to say whether developments and behaviour patterns are hormonally influenced or can be attributed to the smartphone.

«The smartphone is rarely the trigger.»

Philippe Wampfler

Wampfler believes: «The smartphone can reinforce something that already exists, but it is probably rarely a pure trigger.» Referring to a study by Jon D. Elhai from last year, Wampfler explains: «I assume that a low frustration tolerance leads to more intensive smartphone use, but conversely it is also intensified by it.» Intensive smartphone use can also exacerbate a number of psychological problems.

Introduce clear rules

However, Wampfler believes it is unrealistic to withhold mobile devices from children completely. However, he does call for clear rules: «Smartphone use must be practised and used in moderation.» In this context, Bütikofer believes it is important that «agreements are based on trust». He considers simply pulling the plug, i.e. blocking the Wi-Fi, to be a declaration of bankruptcy. «Talk to your daughters and sons from an early age about the dangers and the potential for addiction - and about the importance of a high level of frustration tolerance.» The latter needs to be trained in the same way as jumping ability. Only those who practise can develop the ability to overcome obstacles. And these hurdles grow over the course of a lifetime.

What are the effects of a low frustration tolerance?

It is precisely these hurdles that will force girls and boys to endure frustration, disappointment and setbacks - at school, at work and in relationships. That's why Sara Signer doesn't believe that a lower frustration tolerance due to smartphones will end in disaster for entire generations. Society will force young people to integrate, Signer believes. However, this could be a painful and exhausting process for many. And the smartphone is not innocent of this.
Some brain researchers are convinced that parts of our brain that are not utilised and challenged atrophy. Professor Manfred Spitzer from Ulm is one of the experts who fear that excessive smartphone use leads to precisely this. If young people do not have to learn to process frustration or defeat and to regulate themselves, their frustration tolerance decreases. Lutz Jäncke, Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Zurich, explains that this can even be seen in the size of the frontal cortex.

Divided opinions

Some demonise the smartphone, some warn against it and others see no connection at all between the pocket computer and a decreasing frustration tolerance. One scientist, who does not wish to be named, says: «Why should a lack of frustration tolerance be a problem with digital media of all things? You could just as well argue that the permanent availability of food lowers children's frustration tolerance because they don't learn to live with the disappointment that daddy didn't bring home a mammoth today.»

Kathrin Blum ist Journalistin und war als Kind eine ganz schlechte Verliererin. Sie beobachtet gespannt, wie sich die Frustrationstoleranz bei ihren Töchtern entwickelt.
Kathrin Blum is a journalist and was a very bad loser as a child. She watches with interest to see how her daughters' frustration tolerance develops.

Tips for parents:

  • Be a role model and not be glued to your smartphone all the time.
  • Set up rules for smartphones, for example: they have no place at the dining table or in the children's/teenagers' room at night.
  • Set smartphone times: Sara Signer recommends that young people should spend no more than half of their free time outside of school using media - and balance the other half with exercise in the fresh air.
  • Primary school children should never spend more than 20 minutes a day on their smartphone.
  • Observing children: How do they use their smartphone and how do they feel about it? Is the mobile device a stopwatch when jogging or a metronome when practising the piano? Or is it simply about (pointless) game apps?
  • Buy your children their own device as late as possible, at the end of primary school at the earliest, preferably from the age of 13 or 14.
  • Intervene if you feel that your smartphone is crowding out activities such as sport, practising an instrument or hobbies with friends.
  • A smartphone should never be used to keep a child quiet so that you can have some peace and quiet yourself.
  • Practising waiting and losing with children - in the real world.

Why are online games on smartphones so popular?

Four possible answers from media pedagogue Etienne Bütikofer:

  • Mode und Gruppendruck, «alle machen es». 
  • Eltern nehmen sich zu wenig Zeit für die Kinder, bieten ihnen keine Alternativen an und sind teilweise froh, dass die Kinder beschäftigt sind und nicht über Langeweile klagen.
  • Keine oder nur wenige Geschwister und damit weniger potenzielle Spielpartner.
  • Verinselung der Freizeit, zu wenig freies Spiel.

Read more:

«Child, don't get angry!» - Losing has to be learnt