6 Big Screen-Time Myths That Need To Be Busted

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, essentially, no screen time for babies under 18 months of age. Specifically, they advise “minimizing or eliminating media exposure, other than video chatting” for this age group and setting “media limits” for older children. The World Health Organization likewise recommends no screens under age 2 and a one-hour limit from 2 to 5 years: “Sedentary screen time should be no more than 1 hour; less is better.”

At first glance, these guidelines make perfect sense. No baby needs to be checking their follower count on social media. But many parents soon discover that wanting to abide by these rules and being able to do so are two separate matters.

Screens are so integrated into our lives that it’s not always feasible to keep them out of a baby’s eyeshot. There are screens during sporting events that other members of the family want to watch, screens inside subway trains and on highway billboards, or grandparents on FaceTime. It seems ridiculous to demand that babies be removed from such situations.

Some anxious new parents take such guidelines to absurd extremes. There are parents who do move their baby into another room if a relative turns on the TV, and I once met a nanny at a playground who explained to me that her employers forbid her from using her phone near the toddler she cared for, lest its glow attract his eye.

The spirit of screen limits is to avoid using media to pacify children, depriving them of the human interaction they need for their development. Most parents support this ideal. But none of us can interact with a child for every minute of the day — and when the choice is between pacification and screaming, few of us will choose the screaming. Responding to our child’s cries is the core of our job description, after all.

When my son was 9 months old (yes, we started him that young), my wife was alone with him in the mornings. She had to get ready to go to her job and drop him off at day care. The day care teachers were forgiving of lateness, but her employer was not, and every morning was a battle. She tried building him a pillow barrier to keep him inside the bathroom while she brushed her teeth and washed her face, but he plowed right out of it and crawled off in search of choking hazards and electrical outlets. She tried putting him in his pack-and-play in the living room or his crib in his bedroom, but he screamed until she relented and came and picked him up. So she resorted to Elmo. Plunking him down in front of a few “Sesame Street” YouTube videos gave her enough time to get herself ready. Sure, she felt guilty about it, but that guilt was easier to tolerate than his shrieking.

We can’t expect parents to deny themselves the use of a powerful tool that is right in their pocket at all times. At the same time, any powerful technology can cause harm, and we want to protect kids from that.

In order to have a more realistic and productive conversation about how to minimize the negative effects of screen time, we need to debunk some myths that oversimplify the issue.

Screens are not poisonous. Their use can have negative consequences, but there’s a wide spectrum of ways kids use them, and some are more valuable than others.

Common Sense Media suggests that we use the following categories to think about kids’ screen use:

• Passive: watching videos or mindless scrolling
• Interactive: playing games of doing puzzles
• Communication: FaceTime or social media
• Creation: making digital art or music, or coding

This doesn’t mean you need to teach your baby how to code. It also doesn’t mean that all games are OK, or that social media use doesn’t sometimes devolve into mindless scrolling. These categories are fluid, but you can use them to make a more thoughtful decision about whether to make your kid unplug or give them more time.

“Not all screen time is created equal, and what really matters is what you’re doing with that time. There’s a big difference between looking up a video on how to fix your computer versus just mindlessly scrolling on social media,” Dr. Alok Kanojia, a psychiatrist and author of “How to Raise a Healthy Gamer,” told HuffPost.

Game-playing ability has always correlated with intelligence, and there is a relationship between playing video games and fluid IQ.

“Surgeons who play video games are less likely to make technical errors in surgery,” Kanojia said.

But game-playing and other forms of screen time have benefits beyond skill-sharpening.

“Screen time can also be a source of connection ― especially in gaming communities,” Kanojia said. “In our increasingly digital world, kids can find friends and social support through shared interests online, which can be really meaningful.”

But even interactive screen use can have a downside. For older children, screens can get in the way of them learning how to deal with their emotions.

“The reason screens are so attractive is that they activate certain circuits in our brain — social circuitry, circuitry around achievement and mastery,” Kanojia said. “Video games always have bright sounds and colors, and feel ‘satisfying to play.’”

“The problem is that once we start to become dependent on the screen to fulfill these needs, we stop fulfilling them in real life, which comes with real-world consequences,” he said. “Achievement in a video game is so much easier and entertaining than studying for a test.”

If your child is struggling in school or with their friends, that’s a bigger warning sign than going over their screen time limit, Kanojia said.

If certain kinds of screen time are more valuable, it follows that counting up minutes isn’t the best way to keep kids in check. If they’re composing music, hours with the computer aren’t a bad thing — whereas you might want to put a 20-minute limit on their TikTok app.

This (of course) means more work for parents. You can’t just throw an iPad at your child and go off to tend to all the household chores.

“Monitoring usage is essential,” Shari Camhi, superintendent of Baldwin Union Free School District on New York’s Long Island, told HuffPost.

In other words, you have to continually check in with your kids to see what they’re up to.

“Families should ‘parent’ their child(ren)’s social media activity, cell phones, and other devices,” Camhi said.

She recommended “checking on how your child is feeling, ensuring they are still socializing appropriately and in-person, and making sure there is still electronic-free play time embedded in their day.”

This can mean setting time limits on apps — but beware that kids have a way of figuring out how to get around restrictions pretty quickly. More likely, it means a lot of peeking over their shoulders.

With an older child, it might involve conversations about how screens make them feel, or what they do when they see a social media post that makes them feel bad. Sharing examples from your own life, such as when you unfollow someone or decide to take a social media break, can be helpful.

Parking a child in front of a screen is never ideal, though my son seems to have survived his baby Elmo mornings without incident. But it may be more helpful to think about what kids are not getting when they’re in front of a screen, and working to fill their days with developmentally appropriate, interactive and physical activities, instead of chastising yourself for leaning on Bluey for a few minutes.

When it comes to young children’s language development, the evidence is in: Screens don’t help, and they do appear to cause problems.

Tiia Tulviste is the author of a study on the impact of screen time on young children’s language development. “Our study found that higher screen time is associated with poorer vocabulary and grammatical skills in young children aged 2 1/2 to 4 years, with video games showing the strongest negative impact.” It didn’t make a difference who was playing the game, child or parent.

“No form of screen use — including co-viewing with parents or socializing through screens — was found to benefit language development,” Tulviste told HuffPost.

Researchers believe that the main issue with screen time at this age likely has to do with what kids are missing out on when they’re distracted by the screen: the real-life, interactive moments where language actually develops.

“The aim is to ensure that screen time does not replace valuable direct interactions with family members, such as active play, book reading, storytelling and other developmentally appropriate regular activities,” Tulviste said.

So instead of tallying minutes and feeling guilty about it, parents should put effort instead into maximizing valuable face-to-face and play time.

There’s no end to the educational possibilities of technology. Students can use internet tools to travel the world, visit far-flung museums and ancient sites, or teach themselves new skills. It’s also big business: The EdTech market was valued at over $115 billion in 2022.

But there is also no end to the amount of fooling around that kids do on phones, tablets and computers — even the school-issued ones.

“Limited screen time can certainly elevate an educational experience for students when used appropriately,” Camhi said.

A real educational experience takes significant guidance from a well-trained and responsive adult.

Just because an educational app is open doesn’t mean kids are learning anything. If you’ve ever taken kids to a museum exhibit and watched them run through, pressing every button and pulling every lever without reading the accompanying text, you can imagine what this looks like. Kids are clever, and they can figure out a way to hit the right combination of keys on the keyboard to get a task marked as “complete” or “finished,” or pop up a score without taking in any of the information presented.

I’m not saying all kids are doing this — at least not all the time. But without steady adult supervision, and real dialogue, technology can quickly lose its educational value. I’ve seen no end of “projects” that kids have completed by blindly copy-pasting text from sites they didn’t even read — and ChatGPT now poses much thornier issues for educators and parents.

If your child is throwing tantrums at the end of iPad time, that’s definitely a problem. But adherence to limits without pushback doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is all right.

“The biggest sign of excessive screen time is a problem in another dimension of your child’s life — academic performance, decreased socialization, isolation, increased moodiness, disturbances in physical health, sleep, or problems with appetite,” Kanojia said.

As with any mental health issue, the key is paying close attention to your kid. “Often times, your kid just doesn’t seem like ‘your kid’ — they become angrier, short fused, don’t listen, defiant,” Kanojia said.

If something is going on, limiting screen time won’t solve the problem, although that’s most parents’ first reaction.

“If your kid is having unhealthy screen time, the most important place to start” is “to understand it, usually by asking nonjudgmental questions,” Kanojia said. “Understanding what is fueling the screen usage is important to overcoming it.”

You can’t help until you understand the issue. Bullying, academic struggles and boredom may all lead to excess screen use, but the solutions to those problems are all drastically different.

Here is the real bummer. It’s so easy to slide into some mindless scrolling at the end of a long day, answer that text at dinner or in the car, or crawl into bed with your phone in one hand — but if you don’t want your kid doing those things, you can’t do them either.

“As adults, it is also important to serve as an example to your child and model healthy screen habits,” Camhi said.

She recommended “setting clear boundaries and creating a balanced schedule that includes time for physical activities, homework, family interactions and screen time.”

Setting limits for the whole family feels more fair to older children, but it benefits the little ones, too.

“Setting consistent boundaries for the whole family and creating screen-free zones or times can help foster healthier behaviors,” Tulviste said. “This is the stage when healthy behavioral patterns that last a lifetime are established.”