Last week, the World Health Organization issued new guidelines on how much time parents should permit young children to spend absorbed in digital screens, whether phones, tablets, or TVs. Kids younger than 1 year old, the organization advised, shouldn’t have any screen time, and kids ages 2 to 4 should have their passive screen time capped at an hour a day. “Children under five must spend less time sitting watching screens,” the WHO stated in a press release.
Sitting is a significant word here, as this advice comes in conjunction with the recommendation that parents limit their children’s “sedentary” time and instead promote “active play,” so that children grow up to be physically and mentally healthy.
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Juana Willumsen, a children’s-health expert at the WHO, notes that the recommended limits on sedentary screen time don’t include videochats with relatives, programs that have children actively participating (say, dancing along to whatever’s on-screen), or e-books that a parent reads along with them.
A significant number of American youngsters appear to have screen-time habits that go against the WHO’s recommendations. According to a nationally representative 2017 survey from the children’s-media watchdog group Common Sense Media, half of 3-to-5-year-olds in the United States stare at screens for more than two hours every day, which includes the quarter overall whose daily screen time exceeds four hours.