Is screen time ever good for kids and teens?

Yes, screen time can be good for kids and teens, in moderation, and the evidence for real harm from moderate use is weaker than most parents are led to believe. That is not the same as saying screens are good for children in general. The research points to a middle path: a moderate amount of the right kind of use, ideally shared, looks fine and sometimes helpful, while heavy use that pushes out sleep, play and people is where the problems gather.

This page is general information, not medical advice. If you are worried about a particular child, your GP or health visitor knows their situation.

Is screen time good for kids?

Yes, some of it, depending on what they watch and who is with them. The clearest benefits in the research are for particular kinds of use, not for minutes on a screen as such. For young children, the UK government’s March 2026 guidance says that watching together, talking and asking questions about what is on screen, is linked to better cognitive development than children watching alone, and that slow-paced, age-appropriate programmes support early development better than fast-paced, social media-style videos.^[6]

So the useful question is rarely “screens, yes or no?” It is closer to “which screens, how much, and instead of what?”

Is some screen time good for teenagers?

Yes, probably, and possibly better than none. The best-known test of this idea is a 2017 study of 120,115 English 15 year olds, drawn from the Department for Education’s National Pupil Database.^[2] The researchers called it the Goldilocks hypothesis: that there might be a level of use that is neither too little nor too much.

That is what they found. The link between screen time and mental wellbeing was curved rather than a straight line, so teenagers with moderate use reported better wellbeing than those with very high use and, in many cases, those with none. The authors concluded that moderate use of digital technology is not intrinsically harmful and may be advantageous in a connected world.^[1] For a 15 year old, being entirely offline can mean being left out of the conversations friends are having.

How much screen time is too much for a teenager?

About 2 hours of weekday smartphone use was the point where wellbeing began to dip in that study, though the thresholds varied by activity. On weekdays, wellbeing peaked at roughly:^[2]

• 1 hour 40 minutes of video games
• 1 hour 57 minutes of smartphone use
• 3 hours 41 minutes of watching videos
• 4 hours 17 minutes of using computers

The points at which screen time turned potentially harmful were higher on weekend days.^[2] Two caveats matter. These were survey answers from one point in time, so they show association, not cause. And even beyond the peak, the negative link was modest: the researchers reported that it was only about a third as strong as the positive links between wellbeing and eating breakfast or getting regular sleep.^[2] Treat the numbers as a rough sense of scale, not a stopwatch.

How big is the effect of screen time on wellbeing?

Small: at most 0.4% of the variation in teenage wellbeing, according to a 2019 analysis. Researchers at Oxford reanalysed three large datasets from the US and the UK, covering 355,358 young people in total, and tested thousands of different ways of running the numbers rather than picking one.^[3] The association between technology use and wellbeing was negative but small, and the authors judged it too small to warrant policy change.^[3]

To give that size some meaning, they compared it with other everyday factors. Regularly eating potatoes had nearly as negative an association with wellbeing as technology use in one dataset, and wearing glasses had a more negative one in another. Being bullied had a far larger association.^[3]

The caveat is that an average across hundreds of thousands of young people can hide individual children for whom screens really are a problem. A small average effect is reassuring for most families. It is not a guarantee for yours.

What are the positive effects of screen time for young children?

Three stand out: video calls, good educational programmes and watching together.

Video calls. Children under 2 generally learn better from people than from video. Video chat seems to be an exception, because the person on screen responds in real time. In a study of children aged 12 to 25 months, those who were taught through live FaceTime conversations went on to prefer and recognise their on-screen partner and learned more novel patterns, while children who watched pre-recorded video of the same person did not.^[4] This is why guidance that says “no screens under 2” usually makes an exception for calls with family.

Educational programmes. A well-known study looked at what happened when Sesame Street first aired in 1969 in the US, comparing children who lived where the signal was easy to receive with those who did not. Children with better access did better at school, particularly boys, though the longer-term effects on education and earnings were less clear.^[5]

Watching together. Co-viewing turns a screen into a conversation. The UK’s 2026 guidance singles it out as linked to better cognitive development than watching alone.^[6]

What does UK guidance say about screen time for children?

For under-5s, since 27 March 2026, the UK government advises avoiding screens for under-2s other than shared activities that encourage bonding, interaction and conversation, and no more than 1 hour a day for 2 to 5 year olds, with screens kept out of mealtimes and the hour before bed.^[6] The same guidance notes that the time limits should not apply in the same way to assistive technology used by children with special educational needs and disabilities.^[6]

For children aged 5 to 16 there is no official UK number yet. In June 2026 the government announced its first guidance on healthy screen use for this age group, due in autumn 2026, and said it would avoid blanket rules and help families make informed choices. The announcement also said technology is now part of childhood and can bring real benefits when used well.^[7] For the current age-by-age numbers, see how much screen time should kids have by age?

When does screen time stop being good?

When it starts to replace things children need more. Almost every piece of research above lands on the same idea from different directions: the screen itself matters less than what it pushes out. Sleep, outdoor play, boredom, homework, meals together and face-to-face friendship are the usual casualties. A teenager who spends an hour messaging friends after finishing homework is in a very different position from one who is still scrolling at 1am.

Some signs that the balance has tipped, whatever the minutes say:

• Screens are cutting into sleep, or appearing in bed.
• Your child is irritable or lost when a screen is taken away, most days.
• Hobbies, friends or outdoor time have quietly disappeared.
• Screens are the default answer to every spare five minutes.

For what is known about younger children specifically, our piece on screen time and child brain development goes further.

How do you get the benefits without the downsides?

Four habits cover most of it:

1. Watch with them when you can. Especially for under-5s, a programme watched together and talked about is the version with the best evidence behind it.
2. Choose slow over fast for little ones. Calm, realistic programmes over rapid-fire clips and autoplay.
3. Protect sleep, meals and play. Keep screens out of bedrooms at night, off the table and away from the hour before bed.
4. Leave room for boredom. Unscheduled time without a screen is where children learn to entertain themselves. It is also, frequently, where the best ideas come from.

If you want some screen-free defaults ready to go, our guide to screen-free activities for kids by age has a list for every stage, and The Bored Box puts a set of them on paper.