Screen Time Guidelines by Age

0–17 months

Avoid screens, other than video chatting with family

18–23 months

If introduced, high-quality content only, watched together

2–5 years

Up to 1 hour/day of high-quality programming

6–17 years

Consistent limits; ensure sleep, activity & school aren't displaced

Compare your child's screen time

Child's age (months)

Typical screen time per day (minutes)

This week, roughly

recommended /day

vs. guideline

Guidelines summarized from the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Health Organization recommendations. Every family and every child is different — what matters most is the quality of content, co-viewing, and making sure screens aren't crowding out sleep, movement and face-to-face time. Talk to your pediatrician about what's right for your child.

How these guidelines are put together

The age brackets above summarize the general shape of recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization: avoiding screens (other than video chatting) under 18 months, limiting to high-quality co-viewed content between 18–23 months, capping around 1 hour a day of high-quality programming for ages 2–5, and shifting toward "consistent limits" rather than a single fixed number for school-age children and teens, since screen use at that age is so tied up with schoolwork, socializing and entertainment.

Because official guidance for the 6–17 age range is deliberately non-specific ("ensure media doesn't displace sleep, physical activity or other behaviors essential to health"), the comparison calculator uses a commonly referenced 2-hour/day figure as a practical reference point for that bracket — it isn't an official cutoff, just a widely used benchmark to compare against.

Common edge cases & things to know

Quality and context generally matter more than the raw minute count. Video-calling with a grandparent, an educational app used together, or a family movie night isn't the same as unsupervised, algorithm-driven scrolling, even though both count as "screen time" in a simple daily total.

Totals often look very different on weekdays versus weekends, or during school breaks — a single day's snapshot can be misleading, so many pediatricians suggest thinking in terms of a typical week rather than any one day.

What's displaced by screen time matters as much as the time itself: sleep, physical activity, reading, and unstructured or face-to-face play are the things pediatric guidance is really trying to protect. Two children with identical daily minutes can be in very different situations depending on what's being crowded out.

The American Academy of Pediatrics also offers a personalized Family Media Plan tool for households who want a more tailored set of rules than age-based averages can provide.

Guidelines for this age range have also shifted over time as devices and content have changed — recommendations now generally distinguish between passive viewing, interactive educational apps, and social or gaming use, rather than treating all "screen time" as a single undifferentiated category the way older guidance sometimes did.

Sources

Guidelines referenced from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), HealthyChildren.org, and the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5.