When my oldest child was born in 2008, the recommendations were clear: screen time of any sort was absolutely off-limits. This wasn't just something that I'd heard within the "crunchy" community. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Zero to Three, the two primary science-based authorities on parenthood, both said that "screen" entertainment, such as TV and computers, was not at all acceptable for babies and toddlers.
I took their word for it, at absolute face value. I felt like there was something emanating from the screen that could somehow harm my baby. When I wrote late at night in the rocking chair, I would turn her head away or cover her eyes. In the waiting room at the pediatrician's office, I would constantly turn her head toward me, repeating, "No screen time," much to the confusion of the parents around me.
This went on for three years, at which point she started getting screen time with strict limits.
I had it in my head that a child who sees screens during key phases of development won't correctly learn how reality works. The way I saw it, basic concepts like object permanence (that an object continues to exist when out of view), size, movement, and communication fall apart on screen. Babies and toddlers are still learning what faces and objects are, and what they can do. On a screen, all bets are off: anything is real and nothing is real. The expert recommendation of zero screen time seemed to fit my ideology.
But in the six years between my daughter's birth and my son's birth, something happened: the smart phone explosion. In just six years, screens went from being specific objects with specific functions, to magical machines that did everything: a phone, music-player, computer, camera, camcorder, teleconference caller, and video game console all in one. This changed so many things.
It started with music. My son loves his lullabies and there were times that I would pick out his favorite and put it in his car seat with him while he fell asleep. No harm done, right? Then I found a number of apps that were, really, identical to the baby toys I might have found in the store: push the button and it makes a sound. He delighted in "helping" me take pictures and examining them afterward. And, most importantly, when I had to be separated from him for medical reasons, it meant that he was still able to see my face and know who I was.
I felt a twinge of guilt about it, but I couldn't see any evidence of the harm when I would entertain him with a vocabulary-building or lullaby-playing baby app while I stole a five-minute shower. I couldn't even see evidence of harm when I let him play with it for the entirety of a long car ride. After all-- developmentally speaking-- how different is an educational app from a boardbook or toy?
I was relieved but not surprised when Zero to Three caught up to the modern world and issued recommendations that were in agreement with my experience as a mom: instead of "no screen time," they now recommend smarter screen time. Of course, they still don't recommend using screens as a go-to babysitter or pacifier, but they say that introducing screens early in life can be just fine as long as the child is getting plenty of age-appropriate content and parent interaction-- and as long as screen time is balanced out with time spent playing with real, three-dimensional toys.
I don't want my son to become a smartphone zombie or to value screens over the real world. But I do think that in today's world, screens are so ubiquitous and so useful that it's unreasonable to forgo them all the way through toddlerhood. Today, I'm a fan of smart screen time instead of no screen time.
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