New guidelines from theWorld Health Organizationare advising parents against exposing their children age 1 and below to screens — in any capacity.
Giving recommendations for “sedentary time” in infants younger than 1 year old, the group says “Screen time is not recommended” and instead, “when sedentary, engaging in reading and storytelling with a caregiver is encouraged.”
With children aged 2 to 4, “sedentary screen time should be no more than 1 hour; less is better,” the WHO advises, encouraging caregivers to be “engaging in reading and storytelling” instead, just as in younger age groups.
Toddler using a tablet.Getty
Recommendations from theAmerican Academy of Pediatricssay that the only screen time they advise for children younger than 18 months to 2 years old is video chatting. For ages 2 to 5, they encourage no more than one hour“of high-quality programming”per day, strongly encouraging parents to watch with their children and “[re-teach] in the real world what they just learned through a screen.”
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The new WHO guidelines come almost three months after a study published inJAMA Pediatricsfound that “Excessive screen time has been associated with various negative outcomes, including cognitive delays and poorer academic performance” in children.
The mothers reported their kids’ computer and television habits throughout the three-year timeframe, as well as answered questions surroundingtheir development, social relationships and behaviors. Researchers then compared the data from ages 2, 3 and 5 to find patterns.
On average, the study saw children having two to three hours a day of screen time, which was linked with the aforementioned negative performance outcomes.
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The following month, another set of research published in theJAMA Pediatricsjournal reported that kids and babies under age 2 are spending more than double the time in front of screens today than they did in the late 1990s.
For the purposes of the study, parents in 1997 and 2014 logged the amount of time their kids spent in front of a screen and the results showed that compared to about 1.32 hours per day in 1997, children under the age of 2 in 2014 werehaving around 3.05 hours of screen time a day.
source: people.com
