Over the past year, I’ve been asked to advise government agencies, nonprofits, edtech companies, schools, studios, and distributors on a question that was once considered taboo: What does digital wellbeing look like for children under three?
At the Children’s Media Research and Reform Lab (CMRRL), our work focuses on ages 0–3 because this window shapes the architecture of the developing brain and cascades into language, emotional regulation, learning, and long-term health.
Recently, I submitted a series of recommendations to the UK Department for Education. While the details were technical, the core message applies globally.
For infants and toddlers, developmental outcomes are shaped less by the presence of screens and more by what is consumed on them and what they replace.
Harm emerges when screen use displaces responsive caregiving, interrupts serve-and-return interaction, increases sensory load, or disrupts sleep and self-regulation. Overstimulating pacing, abrupt scene changes, emotionally ambiguous cues, and commercially driven attention tactics intensify these effects.
By contrast, positive outcomes are observed when media is used as a shared tool. When a responsive adult scaffolds attention, narrates the experience, and responds to the child’s cues, the interaction strengthens what we define as the learning bond.
Public guidance often reduces the issue to minutes per day. The evidence tells a different story.
In the first two years of life, developmental impact varies more by content design, context of use, and the child’s regulatory state than by duration alone. A few minutes of poorly designed content can dysregulate an infant. A short, intentional, adult-supported interaction can be neutral or supportive.
The more useful policy question is not “How long?”
It is “What is this replacing, how was it designed, and how is it being used?”
Mobile devices and tablets introduce an “always accessible” dynamic that encourages pacification and solitary use. Background television reduces caregiver interaction and is associated with poorer language outcomes. Many products labeled “interactive” remain cognitively overstimulating for under-twos without caregiver support.
Design matters. Context matters. Adult presence alone is insufficient.
The term co-viewing is widely used and rarely defined. Evidence shows that benefits emerge only when adults actively guide the experience: narrating, pausing, responding, and pacing with the child.
This is why parent education is as critical as content design. Without guidance, even well-intended media can fail to support development.
One of the most consistent findings across studies and observations is this: caregiver device use during caregiving reduces verbal engagement, delays responses, and increases infant distress.
In many cases, developmental risk stems less from what the child watches and more from what the adult misses. Digital wellbeing for infants begins with adult awareness.
Parents today navigate a landscape of prohibitive guidelines, vague quality labels, and a lack of truly developmentally appropriate options. The result is confusion, guilt, and resignation.
When guidance feels unrealistic and alternatives are unavailable, families default to convenience and justification. This is not a parenting failure. It is a systemic failure.
When parents are given clear, development-based guidance and free access to appropriate content and co-viewing resources, healthier habits follow.
The evidence supports interventions that:
Center co-regulation and relationships
Translate neuroscience into practical, usable guidance
Support parents without shame or unrealistic expectations
Incentivize the creation and distribution of developmentally appropriate programming
This is the foundation of CMRRL’s work - from professional development and production guidelines to caregiver education tools and the Early Years Media initiative, which demonstrates how research-aligned design can reduce harm while strengthening family connection.
Parents want clarity, not prohibition.
They want to understand why certain uses matter and how to make better choices within the realities of modern life. They want alternatives they can trust. They want guidance grounded in development, not marketing language.
Most of all, they want a system that supports them instead of judging them.
Governments across the globe are finally beginning to ask better questions.
If we shift the conversation from prohibition to design, from minutes to relationships, and from blame to support, we can build a digital ecosystem that strengthens families instead of fragmenting them.
For children under three, the goal is not to eliminate technology.
It is to ensure that nothing replaces the human connection or negatively impacts healthy development.
That is the standard we should be designing policy, media, and systems around.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.