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How much screen time should a child have? Guidelines by age

Artovia Labs · · 10 min read

According to the World Health Organization, a 2-year-old needs no more than 1 hour of screen time a day [1]. For a 1-year-old, it recommends none at all. So how many hours for an 8-year-old? Surprisingly, one of the world's largest children's health organizations deliberately doesn't give a number [3].

In this guide we'll look at how much screen time is recommended at each age, how much time kids actually spend on screens, and why there's no single number for school-age children. At the end you'll find a plan you can start using tonight.

How much time do kids actually spend on screens?

Before we get to the guidelines, let's look at what's happening today, because the gap is wide.

In a Canadian study that followed 2,441 children from age 2 to age 5, 2-year-olds averaged 17 hours of screen time a week [4]. That's about 2.4 hours a day, more than twice the recommended limit. At age 3, it rose to 25 hours a week, or about 3.6 hours a day.

The numbers keep climbing with age. In the US, 8- to 12-year-olds average 5 hours 33 minutes of screen media a day, and teens average 8 hours 39 minutes [5]. Those figures count entertainment only. Schoolwork and online classes aren't included.

So for most families the question is no longer "screens or no screens?" but "how much, and when?" The clearest answers are given for the youngest children. Why are the rules so strict for them?

Why are screens discouraged under age 2?

A 1-year-old sees a red ball on a screen. When you hand them a real red ball, it's surprisingly hard for them to understand it's the same thing. Researchers call this the "video deficit": young children learn far less from a flat screen than from a real person in front of them [2].

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), toddlers can learn new words from educational videos, but only when a parent watches with them and reteaches the words afterward [2]. So the message isn't "screens are bad." It's "at this age, learning happens with a person."

The Canadian study goes a step further. Children with more screen time at age 2 scored lower on a developmental screening test at age 3, and screen time at 3 showed the same link with scores at 5 [4]. The reverse wasn't found: children with lower scores didn't go on to use more screens later. The effect was small, and this was an observational study, so it doesn't prove screens are the cause. But it suggests the order runs from screen time to development.

Does video chatting count? According to the AAP, no. It's an exception even for the youngest children [2], because there's a real person on the other end, like a grandparent, responding to the child.

With such clear numbers for little kids, it's striking that the number disappears entirely for school-age children. There's a good reason for that.

Why is there no single number for school-age kids?

For children 6 and older, the AAP doesn't say "this many hours a day" [3]. Instead it asks for three things: limits that stay consistent, screens that don't take the place of sleep, physical activity and other healthy habits, and screen-free times and places in the family.

A study from two Oxford researchers shows why that's sensible. Looking at data from more than 350,000 adolescents in the US and UK, they found that digital technology use explained at most 0.4% of the differences in teens' well-being [6]. For comparison, regularly eating potatoes showed almost the same negative association, and wearing glasses showed a larger one. Getting enough sleep and eating breakfast were much more strongly linked to well-being.

That doesn't mean screens have no effect. The link is small, but it isn't zero. The real lesson is that for school-age kids, the problem usually isn't the hours themselves. It's what those hours replace. A game that runs past midnight steals from sleep. A video feed that fills the whole afternoon steals from movement.

So how do you work this out at home? Start with what's fixed and see what time is left.

How to set screen time limits at home: a 5-step plan

  1. Start with the non-negotiables. Children aged 6 to 12 need 9 to 12 hours of sleep a night [7]. The WHO recommends an average of 60 minutes of physical activity a day for ages 5 to 17 [8]. School, homework and meals belong on this list too. Screen time comes out of what's left.
  2. Set a daily amount from the time that's left. Weekdays and weekends can differ. What matters is that the limit isn't renegotiated every day and your child knows it in advance.
  3. Pick screen-free times and places. The AAP suggests at least two: the dinner table and the hour before bed. Devices spend the night outside the bedroom [2, 3]. We explain why this matters so much for sleep in our guide to screens and sleep.
  4. Write the rules together. The AAP's free Family Media Plan tool was made for exactly this [9]. Once the rules are written down, you don't have to explain them again every evening.
  5. Look at content, and at your own use. For young children, the advice is to choose high-quality content and watch together [2]. At every age, the AAP encourages parents to model healthy screen use themselves [3].

Step 2 raises one more question: should screen time be given, or earned?

Should kids earn screen time with chores?

Many families would rather have kids earn their screen time than simply receive it: homework, tidying their room, helping with dinner. The idea has two sides, and research sheds light on both.

The first side is the chores themselves. A US study followed 9,971 children from kindergarten to third grade [10]. Kindergartners who did chores more often rated themselves as more competent socially, academically and in life satisfaction by third grade. That link held regardless of family income or parents' education, and children who did chores also had better math scores.

A second study, in Australia, surveyed the parents of 207 children aged 5 to 13 [11]. Self-care chores and chores done for the whole family were linked to better working memory (holding information in mind and using it) and inhibition (stopping an impulse). Both are observational studies: they show that chores and these skills go together, not that chores cause them.

The second side is screens as a reward. In a small Canadian experiment, 30 overweight children aged 8 to 12 earned TV time by being active [12]. A set amount of activity on a pedometer bought 1 hour of TV.

After 8 weeks, their daily TV time had dropped by almost 2 hours and their activity had risen by 65% [12]. In the other group, who could watch freely, TV time barely changed. The trial was small, and the task was physical activity, not chores.

Another study adds a note of caution. In a Canadian study of 62 children aged 1.5 to 5, mothers who used screens to manage their child's behavior had children with more weekday screen time [13]. For fathers, the same link showed up on weekends. Giving screen time as a reward and taking it away as a punishment are both examples of this. This is also a small observational study, so it can't show cause and effect.

So how do the two fit together? No study has tested that directly yet. But one difference stands out: in the experiment, the rule was set in advance and worked the same way every day; the other study measured screens being used as a tool to manage behavior. Together, the findings suggest a setup like this:

  1. Keep the daily base time fixed. Don't take it away as a punishment, and don't change it on a bad day.
  2. Write down tasks and what they earn in advance. Which task earns how many minutes stays on the list; no bargaining in the moment.
  3. Cap the time that can be earned. That way tasks don't become a way to stretch screen time without limit.
  4. Don't attach rewards to things your child already loves doing. A review of 128 experiments found that expected tangible rewards can reduce the desire to do an activity for its own sake [14]. This tended to be stronger in children than in college students. In the same review, praise and positive feedback increased it. Noticing the work and saying so matters as much as the minutes earned.

Questions parents often ask

Does screen time for homework count?

The numbers in research usually measure entertainment only and leave schoolwork out [5]. Keeping homework time separate at home makes things simpler too. But the screen-free hour before bed applies to homework as well: a screen's light doesn't care what it's being used for.

Is going over the limit harmful?

No one knows of a hard cutoff. The Canadian study couldn't identify a number of hours at which harm begins [4]. For young children, the guidelines are cautious limits built on "less is better" [1]. So what matters isn't a single day but the everyday habit: are screens taking the place of sleep, movement and play [3]?

Can weekends be longer?

The guidelines don't give a separate weekend number. For school-age kids the test is the same: are sleep, activity and family time still in place [3]? You can set different limits for weekdays and weekends, as long as everyone knows them ahead of time.

The bottom line

For young children the numbers are clear: almost no screens before age 2, and no more than 1 hour a day from 2 to 5. For school-age kids, the real question isn't the hours but what the screens replace. When sleep, activity and family time are protected, keeping the limit the same every day makes the rest easier. If you want kids to earn time with tasks, keep the base time fixed and the rewards set in advance.

The next question is the one that worries many parents most: if my child can't put the screen down, is that addiction? The answer may surprise you. We look at what the science says in our guide to screen addiction.

Sources

  1. World Health Organization (2019). Guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age. who.int
  2. AAP Council on Communications and Media (2016). Media and Young Minds. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162591. doi:10.1542/peds.2016-2591
  3. AAP Council on Communications and Media (2016). Media Use in School-Aged Children and Adolescents. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162592. doi:10.1542/peds.2016-2592
  4. Madigan S. et al. (2019). Association Between Screen Time and Children's Performance on a Developmental Screening Test. JAMA Pediatrics, 173(3), 244–250. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.5056
  5. Common Sense Media (2022). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021. commonsensemedia.org
  6. Orben A., Przybylski A. K. (2019). The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use. Nature Human Behaviour, 3, 173–182. doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0506-1
  7. Paruthi S. et al. (2016). Recommended Amount of Sleep for Pediatric Populations. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 12(6), 785–786. PMC4877308
  8. World Health Organization (2020). WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. who.int
  9. AAP. Family Media Plan. healthychildren.org
  10. White E. M., DeBoer M. D., Scharf R. J. (2019). Associations Between Household Chores and Childhood Self-Competency. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 40(3), 176–182. PubMed
  11. Tepper D. L., Howell T. J., Bennett P. C. (2022). Executive functions and household chores: Does engagement in chores predict children's cognition? Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 69(5), 585–598. PMC9796572
  12. Goldfield G. S. et al. (2006). Effects of open-loop feedback on physical activity and television viewing in overweight and obese children: a randomized, controlled trial. Pediatrics, 118(1), e157–e166. PubMed
  13. Tang L., Darlington G., Ma D. W. L., Haines J. (2018). Mothers' and fathers' media parenting practices associated with young children's screen-time: a cross-sectional study. BMC Obesity, 5, 37. PMC6276169
  14. Deci E. L., Koestner R., Ryan R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627–668. PubMed

This article is for general information and isn't medical advice. If you're concerned about your child's health, talk to your pediatrician. Written by Artovia Labs, the maker of Minu, based on the published sources listed above.