Screen Time for Kids by Age: What the AAP Says, from Babies to 16
The short version: For babies under 18 months, skip screens apart from video calls with family. For toddlers and preschoolers, keep it under about an hour a day, at set times, with good shows you watch together when you can. From school age up, the American Academy of Pediatrics no longer gives one number. Its January 2026 policy statement suggests roughly one to two hours of entertainment screen time a day as a range families can start from, and puts the real weight on what screens push out: sleep, play, homework, meals, and friends.
Most parents looking this up want a number they can hold up at 6pm when the tablet negotiations start. We wanted one too. The numbers are below, by age, in a table you can screenshot. But the bigger news of 2026 is that the people who write the guidance have stopped pretending a number does most of the work, and once you see why, the evening fights get easier to plan around.
What changed in 2026
For ten years the line most parents remembered was "no more than two hours a day". In January 2026 the AAP replaced its 2016 guidance with a policy statement called Digital Ecosystems, Children, and Adolescents, and three things moved.
There is no single limit any more. The statement describes a range, from under an hour a day for toddlers and preschoolers up to one to two hours or more of non-school entertainment for school-age kids and teens, and it treats a specific limit as something a family works out with its pediatrician if it wants one.
The blame moved. The statement looks hard at how apps are built: autoplay, endless feeds, streaks, notifications. One of its authors told EdSurge the old recommendations had become "almost impossible" for parents, and that the aim was to take some of the shame off them. If you have ever felt like you were losing to a product designed by a few hundred engineers, that is because you were.
Routines matter more than minutes. Phone-free meals, phone-free bedrooms, no screens in the hour before bed, and no phone during homework show up again and again. A shared family tablet beats a personal one for younger kids. And if screen use is causing real trouble with sleep, school, or friendships, the statement asks pediatricians to look for what might be underneath it, such as anxiety or ADHD, rather than treating the screen as the whole story.
Screen time by age: the cheat sheet
| Age | How much | What matters most |
|---|---|---|
| Under 18 months | None, apart from video calls with family | Faces, voices, floor time. Babies learn very little from a screen. |
| 18 months to 2 | Short, occasional, together | Pick slow, high-quality shows and talk about them while they watch. |
| 2 to 5 | Under 1 hour a day | Set times of day, no open access to a phone or tablet, autoplay off. |
| 6 to 9 | Around 1 to 2 hours of entertainment | Protect sleep, outdoor play, and reading. Homework screens are separate. |
| 10 to 12 | Around 1 to 2 hours, agreed in advance | First phone years. Not ready for social media accounts. No phones in bedrooms at night. |
| 13 to 16 | A plan you make together | Sleep first. Teens help write the rules, and the adults follow them too. |
The hour figures for under-fives line up with the World Health Organization's 2019 guidelines, which say no sedentary screen time for babies under one, and no more than an hour a day for ages two to four, with less being better. The older-age ranges come from the AAP's 2026 statement. Everything in the right-hand column comes from the AAP's age-by-age 5 Cs pages on HealthyChildren.org.
The 5 Cs, in plain words
The 5 Cs come from the AAP's Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, and they are what the 2026 statement points families toward in place of a fixed number. Each one is a question you can actually ask on a Tuesday.
- Child. Who is this particular kid? A child who gets wound up by fast games needs a different plan from a sibling who drifts off happily to a nature documentary.
- Content. What are they watching or playing? An hour of Bluey and an hour of a stranger's unboxing channel are different hours.
- Calm. Is the screen the only way they know how to settle down? If a tablet is the only thing that ends a meltdown, that is worth gently working on.
- Crowding out. What did the screen replace? Sleep, outdoor play, homework, dinner together, and friends are the things to protect.
- Communication. Do you talk about what they see online? Kids who can tell you about the weird video are kids who will tell you about the scary one.
Crowding out is the one we come back to most, partly because we are guilty of it ourselves. A screen that fills twenty minutes while the pasta boils is fine. The same screen at 10pm in bed, eating the sleep a nine-year-old needs, is the actual problem, whatever the daily total says.
Screen time for babies (under 18 months)
The AAP's guidance for this age is the closest thing to a firm line it still draws. Infants learn language and social skills from faces, and they learn very little from a screen. Cartoons and nursery rhyme videos are not recommended. Video calls are the exception: a FaceTime with grandparents counts as time with grandparents, and the AAP calls it beneficial.
If you do put something on so you can shower, you are not damaging your child. The AAP's own pages say brief use of a slow, high-quality program is fine. What to avoid is the TV running in the background all day, or long stretches of YouTube.
Screen time for a 2 year old
From around 18 months to two, the guidance opens a little: short, occasional viewing of high-quality shows, ideally with you on the sofa next to them. Two-year-olds learn far more from a show when an adult says "look, the dog is hiding!" than when they watch alone.
The WHO puts the ceiling for a two-year-old at one hour a day, with less being better. In practice that looks like one episode after nap time, not a tablet in the stroller.
Screen time for 3, 4, and 5 year olds
Under an hour a day is the guidance from both the AAP and the WHO for this age band. The AAP's preschool page adds three practical rules that do most of the work:
- Keep screens to regular times of day. "After lunch" or "while dinner cooks" ends far fewer arguments than "when you ask nicely".
- No open access to a phone or tablet. The device lives somewhere you control, and it comes out for the agreed slot.
- Pick the shows and turn autoplay off. PBS KIDS, Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger, and Blue's Clues are the AAP's own examples. Influencer channels carry a lot of marketing and not much to learn from.
A four-year-old will still melt down when the episode ends. That is normal, and it says nothing bad about your parenting. A predictable end ("one episode, then bath") and a next thing to go to help more than a warning countdown does.
Screen time for a 6 year old, and kids up to 9
From school age, the AAP's 2026 statement gives a range rather than a rule: around one to two hours of entertainment screen time on a typical day, with schoolwork counted separately. The AAP's school-age page cares less about the exact total and more about what still fits around it: homework, meals together, sports with other kids, and enough sleep.
Six to nine is also when screens start to become social. Games with chat, shared YouTube channels, the classmate who already has a phone. A few things help:
- Keep devices in shared rooms. A tablet in the kitchen is easier to live with than one in the bedroom.
- Watch and play with them sometimes. You will learn more about Minecraft in twenty minutes than in a year of asking.
- Decide the weekend rules before the weekend, while everyone is calm.
Screen time for kids 10 to 12
This is where most families get the first phone, and where the arguments get sharper. The AAP's school-age guidance says plainly that kids this age are not ready for social media accounts, even when classmates have them. Most platforms also set 13 as their own minimum age.
The best single rule for this age is no phones or gaming devices in the bedroom at night. It protects sleep, it removes the 11pm scroll nobody admits to, and it is a rule you can enforce by looking at a charging shelf. Our article on reducing screen time for kids without battles covers how to make rules like that stick.
Screen time for teens (13 to 16)
For teenagers the AAP stops talking in hours almost entirely. Its guidance for older teens focuses on sleep (plan screen use so it does not delay or break up sleep), keeping phones out of the bedroom at night, showing teens how to take control of their own feeds with tools like "not interested" and turning off recommended content, and including their input when you write the family's rules.
That last one is the one that matters. A rule a fourteen-year-old helped write is a rule they will defend to a friend. A rule handed down is a puzzle to solve. And the AAP is clear that the adults in the house follow the plan too, which, if we are honest, is where a lot of family plans quietly fall apart.
How to tell if it is too much
Forget the total for a moment and check what it is crowding out. Screen time is probably too much for your child if:
- They are regularly going to bed late, or waking up tired, because of a screen.
- Homework, outdoor play, or time with friends keeps losing to it.
- Turning it off reliably ends in a meltdown that lasts longer than the show did.
- They have stopped doing things they used to love.
- Screens have become the only way they calm down.
If several of these are true and it feels bigger than habits, talk to your pediatrician. The 2026 statement specifically asks doctors to look at what might sit underneath heavy screen use.
Turning the guidance into settings
Guidance is the easy part. The hard part is the 7pm moment, and that is where the phone's own settings help.
On iPhone and iPad, iOS 27 added Time Allowances, which set daily budgets for Games, Social Media, and Entertainment and suggest starting points based on your child's age. Screen Time Schedules let you decide which apps are available before school, during school, and after. Every device in your Family Sharing group needs to be on version 27 for these to work. If the reports on your phone go quiet, our guide to Screen Time "has not been available for 7 days" walks through the fix.
On Android, Google Family Link sets daily limits, bedtime, and app approvals from a parent's phone.
Both are free and worth turning on first. If the limits keep getting argued past, our comparison of app blockers for kids covers what to try next, including Unglue, which keeps the chosen apps blocked until your child has earned the minutes with something real, like a walk or a chore.
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Common questions
How much screen time should a 2 year old have?
Very little, and ideally with you. The WHO says no more than an hour a day for a two-year-old, with less being better, and the AAP recommends short, occasional viewing of high-quality shows watched together. Video calls with family do not count against that.
How much screen time is OK for a 5 year old?
Under an hour a day of good-quality programs, at regular times, is the guidance from both the AAP and the WHO. Keep the device somewhere you control, turn off autoplay, and give the screen a predictable end.
Is 2 hours of screen time a day bad for a 6 year old?
Not on its own. The AAP's 2026 statement gives school-age kids a range of around one to two hours or more of entertainment screen time, and asks families to look at what it replaces. Two hours that leave time for sleep, play, homework, and dinner together is a very different two hours from one that cuts into bedtime.
Does homework count as screen time?
The AAP counts it separately. Its ranges for school-age kids and teens refer to entertainment media, with schoolwork outside the total. It does still recommend keeping phones away during homework, so the "homework" screen stays homework.
Did the AAP get rid of screen time limits?
It got rid of the one-size limit. The 2026 statement still gives ranges by age, and keeps a firm line for babies, but it treats a specific number as something each family can set with its pediatrician. The focus moved to routines, content quality, and the design of the apps themselves.
What age should a child get social media?
The AAP's school-age guidance says children are not ready for social media accounts before their teens, and most platforms set 13 as their minimum. Even after that, the AAP suggests starting with clear family rules and checking in often about how it is going.
Sources
- American Academy of Pediatrics, Digital Ecosystems, Children, and Adolescents: Policy Statement, Pediatrics, 2026.
- HealthyChildren.org (AAP), the 5 Cs of media guidance, with age pages for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, school-age children, and older teens.
- World Health Organization, Guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age, 2019.
- EdSurge, New AAP "screen time" recommendations focus less on screens, more on family time, February 2026.
- Apple, What's new with parental controls in Screen Time and Family Sharing.