Children’s Hospital Los Angeles experts provide strategies to help parents balance screen time and ensure children get the sleep they need for healthy development.

Summary: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles offers guidelines to help parents manage their children’s screen time, emphasizing the importance of balance to support healthy sleep and overall development. The guidelines include recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and insights from CHLA experts in behavioral-developmental health.

Key Takeaways:

  • Establishing Healthy Screen-Time Habits: Experts recommend creating clear boundaries around screen use, prioritizing adequate sleep and physical activity, and encouraging co-viewing and discussions to enrich children’s media experiences.
  • Impact of Excessive Screen Time: Overuse of screens can disrupt sleep, cause irritability, and hinder cognitive and social development, leading to long-term effects like lower academic performance and higher rates of depression and anxiety.
  • Importance of Unstructured Play: Engaging in unstructured play and screen-free activities is crucial for children’s development, promoting social interactions, creative problem-solving, and emotional regulation. Parents are encouraged to model healthy screen habits and create screen-free family routines.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles experts are offering guidance for managing screen time in children of all ages to ensure adequate sleep and support overall development.

In an increasingly digital world, most of us need screens for nearly every aspect of our lives, from work to home and everywhere in between. Data from Nielsen estimates that the average American spends over 11 hours per day interacting with media.

Now, think of kids: Many have never known a reality without screens. Even babies seem to be born with a built-in knowledge of how to navigate a smartphone. But research shows us just how important it is to monitor how much time kids spend consuming media to ensure their brains and bodies have proper time and space to develop.

While avoiding screens altogether is nearly impossible in 2024, establishing healthy boundaries and routines around media use will ensure your child can thrive as they grow.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is offering a guide on screen time for all ages, which include official recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for young children and the expert perspectives of three Children’s Hospital Los Angeles leaders who specialize in behavioral-developmental health: 

How Do Experts Define ‘Screen Time’?

The AAP defines screen time as any time spent watching screens, including smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, TVs, and computers. When the COVID-19 pandemic shifted realities for many families, the AAP added one important exception to this rule: interactive video chatting with family and friends.

“Technology has advanced our lives in so many wonderful ways,” says Griffin, in a release. “Establishing healthy screen habits is about creating balance while respecting that technology is always going to be part of our lives.”

Screen-Time Recommendations

Strictly limit all digital media use. This includes “background” activities like having the TV on or using your phone when your child is in the same room, which can disrupt the type of focused play that is most helpful for babies’ developing brains. 

Video calls with family and friends are appropriate.

Up to one hour per day of high-quality programming designed for the very young is appropriate.

To enrich your toddler’s screen-time experience, try co-viewing shows with them, answering questions and encouraging conversations about the program’s content.

Experts recommend establishing clear boundaries around screen time that prioritize adequate sleep (nine to 12 hours) and physical activity (more than one hour).

For teens, the negative effects of excessive screen time on their mental and emotional well-being are well-documented.

Work with your teen to establish clear boundaries and a family plan that defines how long they should be using screens, where they can use screens and which types of content they can consume. Prioritize adequate sleep (eight 10 hours) and physical activity (more than one hour). 

Experts also emphasize the importance of monitoring your teen’s social media exposure and keeping an eye on their online activities to protect them from potential risks.

The Power of Unstructured Play (at Every Age)

“We know that young children learn with their entire bodies,” says Griffin in a release. “That’s the amazing thing about young brains.” She emphasizes that practicing gross motor activities (engaging the arms, legs, and torso) is just as important for infants and toddlers as developing fine motor skills (using the hands and wrists).

“When play is unstructured, children take the lead,” says Williams in a release. “They explore the characteristics of different objects, try out activities to learn what happens, and use toys and other objects in new ways. This type of exploration builds connections in the brain through problem solving, new experiences, and hypothesis testing.” 

Williams explains that this kind of play also requires active engagement from children, which helps build their attention span. “Young children learn the most when the activity has a social component,” Williams says, adding that one of the most important types of unstructured play for infants and toddlers involves back-and-forth interactions with a caring and attentive adult.

As kids grow up, it’s just as essential to encourage moments of unstructured play and provide them ample opportunities to use their imaginations. In fact, experts see boredom as a gateway to cultivating essential skills like creative problem-solving and critical thinking.

“There is something to be said about making space for exploring new hobbies and activities that don’t require screens,” Griffin says in a release. “Kids should have a variety of opportunities for practicing social interactions and self-regulation through a balance of activities.”

How Does Too Much Screen Time Affect Behavior?

The most common problems CHLA pediatricians see when kids are engaging in too much screen time:

  • Disrupted sleep 
  • Frequent irritability 
  • Attention challenges
  • Less pretend and creative play
  • Less emotional expression

Excessive screen time can have longer-term impacts on a child’s development. Research shows that infants and young children who consume a lot of media score lower on memory, reading, and ability tests once they reach school age. 

Too much screen time can even lead to higher rates of depression and anxiety in older kids. Vanderbilt explains that much of today’s media, whether it’s TV, social media, or video games, can put kids into a heightened mental state. Extended periods in this state affect everything from mood and attention to sleep and can ultimately create dependency. 

“Setting clear limits ensures screen use doesn’t lead to dependency for self-regulation,” says Vanderbilt in a release.

Modeling Healthy Screen Habits

“Adults are the first teachers,” says Griffin in a release, challenging parents to start by conducting a screen-time self-assessment. “If our own screen use is excessive, we’re modeling that for our kids.”

Griffin explains that screen-time boundaries work best when the whole family collaborates on a media-use plan: “Having these conversations together will help your child grow into a responsible digital citizen who understands how to balance life and other interests.”

For children of all ages, one-to-one and group-based peer interactions are essential to strong social, emotional, physical and neurocognitive development. “Young children especially need ‘contingent’ interactions, meaning responsive face-to-face engagements with their caregivers, to develop their social and language skills,” says Vanderbilt in a release.

Williams suggests that it’s often the subtler times when screens have the most impact. For example, a parent and child are riding the bus together: “This could be an ideal time for unstructured interaction that builds language, such as talking about what they are seeing outside the window,” she says in a release. 

When both the child and the parent are using screens, Williams explains that children miss out on the opportunity to learn about what’s happening in their community, have their parent’s attention, and practice “serve-and-return interactions” with their parent.

Screen-Free Activities

Focus on providing time and space for activities that help promote emotional regulation, socialization, and creative problem-solving.

For infants and toddlers, interactive games like peek-a-boo, making sounds back and forth (and pausing to give the child a chance for a “turn”), and singing songs with movements or gestures are great examples of play that help young children expand their social skills. For school-age kids, some examples of healthy activities include reading, dancing to music, playing outside with friends or siblings, playing a sport or drawing.

The most effective way to get kids on board with screen-free play? Make these activities a family affair.

Try designating screen-free times of the week, or screen-free zones within your home, that the whole family abides by. Building intentional spaces to enjoy alternative activities together will contribute to healthy rituals and rhythms for your entire household.

CHLA experts also recommend turning off screens an hour before bed and removing phones, tablets, computers, TVs and any other electronics from your child’s bedroom at night. The light from screens can trick the brain into thinking it’s time to wake up.

Where to Find Age-Appropriate Media

In today’s ever-expanding sea of content, it might feel tricky to discern what’s appropriate for your child and their developmental age.

When in doubt, CHLA experts recommend starting here:

  • Common Sense Media, a nonprofit platform with more than 45,000 age-based media ratings and reviews from independent experts
  • Public television stations and media (like PBS Kids and Sesame Workshop)
  • Your local library 
  • International Children’s Digital Library

What if I Can’t Follow Screen-Time Guidance Perfectly?

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that establishing positive screen-time habits isn’t about demonizing all media use. Media use can be a healthy and educational part of our daily routines.

“Establishing healthy screen-time habits is about teaching kids an appropriate media diet at an early age,” says Vanderbilt in a release. “Maximizing the pro-social and educational value of screens and limiting screens’ ability to affect your child’s growth and development will set you up for success.”

In our screen-obsessed world, Griffin assures parents that even professionals struggle to maintain “perfect” screen-time boundaries with their children.

“The real problem arises when we develop routines, then those routines become second nature,” explains Griffin in a release. “Parents shouldn’t be too hard on themselves, but considering their child’s needs and working to create standards for how their family approaches screen time makes a big impact.”

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