Children’s screen time guidelines revised; American Academy of Pediatrics declares not all electronics created equal

Children as young as 18 months of age may benefit from some screen time, states the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) revised guidelines on how children should consume electronics. New guidelines published on Friday, October 21, 2016, abandon the controversial one-size-fits-all approach of limiting screen time to no more than two hours regardless of age or activity.

AAP’s original assessment failed to distinguish between the age of the child, the scope of the content consumed — educational or entertainment — and whether the screen time relates to television, tablets, laptops, or smartphones.

Child health advocates and researchers have lobbied the APP for years to changes its response based on emerging studies that show how children — even at very young ages — may benefit from using media if it’s designed for learning and engages conversation with the parent or caregiver.

The new papers published in the science journal Pediatrics highlight that the AAP has finally updated its thinking on the matter, breaking down media use according to age and whether content is educational or for entertainment. Parents are encouraged to be more lenient when their child needs to look up topics on Wikipedia or tackle some coding module on Khan Academy.

With that said, the AAP recommends that parents regulate the entertainment side of media use — social media, video games, streaming services, and commercial television — and balance it with other healthy behaviors. Digital media consumption should not surpass the time spent on the non-digital forms of learning, like physical activity, exploration, and face-to-face social interaction.

Conventional thinking was that children younger than two should avoid screen time altogether; now, the cutoff dropped to 18 months . But if parents choose to use Skype or FaceTime to chat with family members, then the technology may be introduced even sooner.

Parents of children between 18 and 24 months of age who wish to introduce digital media are advised to select high-quality content/apps and to “test apps before the child uses them, play together, and ask the child what he or she thinks about the app.” APP emphasizes having a shared media moment in which the parent watches and plays with the content/app alongside the child to help them understand what they’re viewing, as opposed to letting the child navigate it on its own.

Children between the ages of two to five should be limited to no more than one hour per day, suggests the AAP, with parents once again, taking an active role in co-watching the program with the child. After the age of six, moderation should be employed to ensure kids retain “consistent limits” on time spent using media, especially when it’s the entertainment variant.

Finally, AAP recommends that parents enforce a media-free family time, such as during dinner, or in specific sections of the house like the bedroom. It’s even provided an interactive guide for building a family media plan, with the intention of helping parents select different strategies to media management and customize their household’s rules according to their specific children.

Indeed, there’s no definitive way to handle technology in the household, and every family will have its own technique. The underlying importance is that screen time is okay, so long as it’s constructive, and doesn’t interfere with adequate sleep, physical activity, and other healthy behavior.

Source: Slate