A new survey found the majority of Americans set their own screen time limit for children that was much shorter than the actual screen time children experience.
The results of the YouGov poll found that 59% of its 5,000 respondents suggested a maximum daily screen time for children between 2 and 5 years old should be under an hour every day. Meanwhile, 28% answered between two to four hours or more is “unlikely to be harmful.”
However, a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association, which sampled over 48,000 children, found 50% were consuming more than an hour of screen time every day during the year 2021, the most recent year data is available. That was a decrease from 2019, when over 55% of children spent more than an hour staring at screens.
One group stood out in the study, as 58.9% of children the same age living in poverty reported high levels of screen time. An increase in this type of media consumption can be linked to “lower psychological well-being among preschool-aged children,” per the study.
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, screen time tends to increase as children get older. The average child between the ages of 8 and 10 spends six hours a day looking at screens, and those between 11 and 14 spend an average of nine hours a day. After the age of 15, the average drops down to 7 1/2 hours per day.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than an hour per day of screen time for children over the age of 2 until they are 5.
