We need to stop talking about screentime. Screen use is what matters.

I recently posted on LinkedIn about how I’m pleased to see the UK government thinking and consulting before acting on screentime/social media, and shared a few thoughts as someone who spans the worlds of child health/development, tech and parenting. (You can read that post here). 

In reply, Prof Pasco Fearon - a friend and world-leading expert on child development -  helpfully pushed me a bit more on screentime. As I started to reply, I quickly bumped up against LinkedIn’s reply length limits, so decided to write something here… 

If I were to try to sum up my sense on Screentime it is as follows:

(1) We have a screentime problem - globally; 

In some places 7hrs+/day on screens for U5s is quite common... In our Tandem user research we've heard stories of kids spending all day at childminders/home with a tablet for 'company', and these anecdotes are bore out in self-reported survey data too. We need to address this; a lot of current screen use is probably mostly sedentary, solo, and designed to sell ads not to support development. Bad for brains. Bad for physical development, eye health, etc. 

(2) Screentime is too imprecise a term; we need to use clearer language. 

Conflating my facetime call with my daughter when I’m travelling for work with 7hrs of brainrot isn't helpful. We need to give parents guidance on Screen use, not just screen time. Now that guidance probably should talk about quantity/time as well as quality (more below), but we need to be wary of over-simplification. In addition, in this guidance, we need to be mindful of amplifying parental guilt, and of distraction from other - environmental and social - underlying drivers of headline ‘screentime’ stats. 

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If I were to guess/hope where the guidance that the UK Government is currently consulting on might come out, I'd pitch for something like this*:

"For under 5s, screentime can be helpful or harmful; both quality and quantity matter, and it's as much about the role that you - the adult - play in the screentime as the role your child/children play. On average, most of us should be using screens less and differently with young children. But as a parent you don’t need to feel guilty about/reduce healthy screen time. Focus your efforts on things that don’t fit into this category. Here is some advice on how to work out what use of screens is a problem for young kids: 

Healthy screentime: 

There is good reason to think things like video calls with parents, family, friends etc are good for young children; they can help to build connection, can be playful and fun, and you do not need to worry about this sort of screen time. You will probably want to keep calls quite brief for young children though, as they may get bored!

Other activities that involve screens which - with moderation - are probably also good for child development. Here is a basic checklist you can ask about the way you are using a screen to work out if it is helpful or harmful to your child: 

1. Is your child using the screen with someone else? Are you doing the same thing as you child? Are you using it together? 
2. Is your child using the screen for a short time? (less than around 20-30minutes in any session)
3. Is the screen/device making your child active (eg dance, sing, move around) or passive (sit still)?
4. Is the screen use helping to start/support conversations between you and your child? Do you pick up on themes/issues/ideas?
5. Is the screen use helping you to find some calm/solitary time that your child needs to manage after a long day and/or lots of stimulation?
6. Is the screen use helping you to cope/giving you a vital short break (especially if you’re having a particularly hard time)?
7. How close is the screen to your child’s eyes? Does their gaze regularly shift to things or people that are further away?
8. Does the device/screen use stop you from doing other things, especially shared activities? (e.g. sorting the washing together, or going out to the park)
9. …[there are probably other questions i’m missing here… but this is a start]

To flip this around, I think we can probably say unhealthy screen use is mostly solo; prolonged sessions that keeping your child sedentary on a couch. It’s about passively consuming content; it isn't filling a need that you have for a little bit of time or that your child has for a little bit of time to process their day. It's screen time that involves a child's eyes glued to high-frequency content that's designed for addiction, where their gaze rarely moves off the screen and the screens are held close to their young developing eyes. It's screen time that stops you going out to the park or doing the chores together if you're at home. 

[*Important caveat: this consultation will - I hope - include a much more thorough review of the evidence and consultation with parents/children than I've been able to do, so I'm happy to be corrected/updated!]

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Now I'm deliberately focused here on young children, as it's the area that I and Tandem are most focused on and where I have at least a sense of the state of the current evidence. However, I think you could write a very similar checklist or decision tree that would work for any age of children and young people. Or indeed for our - adult - use of screens.

All that said, my sense is that we probably do have too much unhealthy screen use in society...  across the age spectrum. This is based on our user research talking to families, observing friends and peers, and reflecting on my own use of my phone. Although the research on this is growing, I don't think we have good enough data, and I think that's in part because we often ask about screen time or use overly crude measures of what content is being consumed by children. I suspect the best data on screen time is actually held in the big tech companies that build the operating systems for our devices or control the major platforms like Tiktok and YouTube (Kids).

So I think it's right to flag there's a problem, but I do think we will be fighting an uphill battle unless we use the right language, bring parents with us in a straightforward, clear way, and acknowledge that not all screen time is created equally.

Rob

(CEO & co-founder @ Tandem)

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PS: I think it's important that under any discussion on this, we add a postscript, which is that sometimes screen time or screen use is the outcome rather than the problem. I and many others have regularly made the point that we should also look at what's driving parents and children to form these behaviour patterns where we do spend so much time online rather than outdoors, for example. I think we should make sure every time we have a conversation about screen time or digital use, we should look at the physical world and physical spaces that we create for children and young people and families. Until everyone has a safe street to walk on that's not polluted, that's not got scary levels of road danger, and that they can walk to a clean, safe park, high street or playgroup. We should spend at least as much time discussing these problems as the way we use technology.