Parents regularly use media to help regulate their childs difficult emotions, particularly for those with a more difficult temperament. However, no research has examined how this may be related to the development of problematic (or addictive-like) media use in early childhood. The purpose of the study was to examine associations between temperament, parental media emotion regulation, and problematic media use in young children, using both questionnaires and observational data. Participants included 269 toddlers (2-3 years old) and their parents, who completed several observational tasks and questionnaires. Analyses revealed that higher levels of media emotion regulation was associated with more problematic media use and more extreme emotions when media was removed in toddlers. Additionally, temperament (specifically negative affect and surgency) was related to problematic media and extreme emotions and was mediated by media emotion regulation. Parents should avoid using media as a primary way of regulating their childrens emotions as this may be related to the development of problematic media strategies during infancy.

In March 2018, the President of the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA), Mike Potegal, appointed a special commission to prepare a report on youth violence. This commission was “charged with the task of producing a public statement on the known risk factors for youth violence, based on the current state of scientific knowledge. If the Commission finds sufficient evidence of harmful effects, then its public statement may include public policy recommendations.” What follows is the final report of the Youth Violence Commission, delivered in March 2018.This report was written by a group of ISRA researchers with expertise on youth violence. This report is based on a previous youth violence report (Bushman et al., 2016), but it is shorter in length, more accessible in language, contains additional material, and is more up-to-date.