Young children and screens: what are some things parents can do?

In France in the mid-2010s, a child of two spent an average of 56 minutes per day looking at screens; for children aged three and a half it was 1’20”, and for children aged five and a half, 1’34”. Screen exposure times differ by the sociodemographic characteristics of the household the child belongs to, and they tend to be higher in underprivileged households.

The above-cited times exceed both national and international recommendations for children of those ages and can have a substantial impact on child development. But other factors should be considered: the child’s other activities (reading, playing sports, etc.) and the given moment of the day. Family meals, for example, are a key moment for exchanges that advance children’s language development; eating with the television on is particularly unadvisable as it undermines that development.

Shuai Yang, Mélèa Saïd, Hugo Peyre, Franck Ramus, Marion Taine, Evelyn C. Law, Marie-Noëlle Dufourg, Barbara Heude, Marie-Aline Charles, Jonathan Y. Bernard, Associations of screen use with cognitive development in early childhood: the ELFE birth cohort, The Journal of Child Pyschology and Psychiatry, 29 August 2023

Kevin Diter, Sylvie Octobre, Les enfants de moins de 6 ans et les écrans numériques : à chacun son rythme, d’après l’enquête Elfe, Insee références, France portrait Social, 2022

Online: October 2023