Screen-free
No screens at all in early childhood, and no apology for it.
Screens are simply not part of the house for the early years — usually until around seven, and the reasoning is developmental rather than about content. The argument is that young children build attention, imagination and boredom tolerance out of unmediated time, and that a screen is not a neutral container for good content but a different kind of hour. It is the only position here with no grey area to manage, which is both its cost and the whole of its appeal.
Not what it promises
Every approach here works for the families it suits; the useful question is what it costs to run.
- Absorbing every argument, because there is no partial version to fall back on
- A plan for the aeroplane, the waiting room and the illness — the three places it breaks
- Standing apart from every other household your child visits
- Adults who mostly follow it too, or the child learns the rule is about being small
How it gets misread
Assumed to be about content — that the objection would go away with better programmes. It is a claim about the medium and the age, and better content does not touch it.
Where it stands
Every position with the source it was read from, and the pale band is how much internal variation the approach genuinely tolerates. A wide band is not vagueness — it means the texts in this family really do disagree with each other about that axis.
Source: Guidelines on Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour and Sleep for Children Under 5
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
The highest conflict demand in the instrument, and the reason most households that try it stop.
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Source: Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
What to read
Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood — Alliance for Childhood
Dated in its specifics and still the clearest statement of the case.
The Anxious Generation — Jonathan Haidt
The contemporary version of the argument. Read the published critiques alongside it — the disagreement is substantive, not partisan.
Compared with
Sources for this row
Guidelines on Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour and Sleep for Children Under 5
World Health Organization, 2019. Cited for the under-fives positions. Note that the guideline development group rated the certainty of the screen-time evidence as very low.
Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
Alliance for Childhood, 2000, with the Waldorf position it draws on. Primary source for the screen-free row, including the case for delaying to around seven.