While I fully support the government’s guidance to parents of under-fives to keep screen time to under an hour a day (Keep under-fives’ screen time to no more than an hour a day, UK advice says, 27 March), this does not go far enough. Children do not only experience screens at home; they also encounter them in early childhood settings and schools.
Contrary to the advice given in the new guidance for parents, the government requires all children to complete a screen-based test within their first six weeks at primary school. The Reception Baseline Assessment takes up 20 minutes of their daily screen time. Teachers are not able to interact with the child while doing the test as they must follow a script. This contradicts the advice for parents, which suggests that the best form of screen use involves adults interacting with their children while using screens.
I researched this and found that all children observed completing the test showed signs of anxiety. Despite this, they had to complete the test regardless.
If the government is serious about limiting the harms associated with screen use in young children, it must take a more holistic approach and regulate screen time in educational settings as well as the home.
Dr Mandy Pierlejewski
Halifax, West Yorkshire
The UK government now tells parents of under-fives to choose “slow-paced” media content. But where, exactly, are parents meant to find it? We know what slow media looks like. Decades of research (including my own) show that young children learn best from content with clear narratives, low sensory intensity and repetition. BBC children’s programming was designed around these principles.
But as public funding declined and commercial pressures grew, children’s screen time shifted towards YouTube and commercial platforms, driven by persuasive, manipulative design, with growing evidence of harm to learning and wellbeing. The most widely consumed YouTube content and top-ranking apps are fast, fragmented and designed to capture attention, not support learning.
This is the contradiction at the heart of the new screen time guidance. Parents are told to prioritise slow media, but the media available to them is dominated by the opposite. The guidance is a welcome step. But if it is to work in practice, it must go further by ensuring that high-quality, developmentally appropriate content is available through sustained investment in public service children’s programming.
Natalia Ingebretsen Kucirkova
Visiting professor, UCL Institute of Education
Regarding the advice to reduce screen time for under-fives, it became clear about 20 years ago that too much time spent focusing close to the eye, such as in reading and screen use, during the early years increases the risk of myopia (shortsightedness). This affects about a third of people in the UK.
Focusing much of the time within a few feet, and, even worse, within a few inches, causes the normal elongation of the eye (which happens fastest in the first few years, before normally stopping at about age 12) to happen much faster, and to go on for longer.
We know that genetic factors affect the incidence of myopia, but studies have shown that increasing the amount of time spent outside, and reducing the amount of close focusing that a child does, significantly reduces its incidence. There are other undisputed benefits of reduced screen use, but a reduction in the incidence of myopia would be another important benefit.
Dr Mary Gibbs
Rusholme, Manchester
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