Before she had her son, Sara Yeasted did not imagine that “Finding Nemo” would be regular features in their evenings.
“When I was pregnant I was totally against television — I thought I was always going to be doing puzzles or something,” said Yeasted, of West Deer, Pa., as her 2-year-old son dived under a bridge at the play area. “But there’s life that has to get done, too.”
And so her son sometimes watches a movie for an hour in the evenings while she and her husband make dinner or straighten up.
It’s a reality that the American Academy of Pediatrics — which had previously advised that children under 2 should not be exposed to any media — is now confronting, with new recommendations out Thursday on children’s media use.
The national group of pediatricians now advises that children under 18 months see screens only in the form of video chatting. Children 18 months to 2 years old should be shown media only together with an adult and children age 2 to 5 should watch one hour or less. The AAP did not specify time limits for school-age children, recommending instead that their media use not get in the way of adequate sleep or physical activity.
“The tone is around the idea of media not being something that’s inherently bad or good,” said Megan Moreno, a principal investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and co-author of the report. “There are benefits and risks and the goal is to help parents work with their children to maximize the benefits and minimize risks.”
It’s a different take than the one the AAP took in 2011, when it emphasized that for children under 2, screens have “potentially negative effects and no known positive effects.”
The change comes from the fact that screens are now practically inescapable. Fisher-Price now markets a drool-proof iPhone case, some school districts issue middle schoolers a take-home tablet and 14- to 17-year-olds send an average of 100 texts per day.
“I think we should start talking to the parents about it at birth,” said Joseph Aracri, system chair of Allegheny Health Network pediatrics. “We need to embrace what’s going on right now and figure out how to work with it because bucking it is not going to work.”
The AAP notes that while children in the 1970s started watching television at age 4, children today commonly start at 4 months. Most parents report that their children watch television for more than two hours per day, and that doesn’t count other forms of screen time. One study found that by age 3, one-third of children had televisions in their bedrooms.
The group urges against using devices within an hour of bedtime because the light emitted can disturb Circadian rhythms. It also recommends keeping screens out of children’s bedrooms while they are sleeping.
The AAP has developed an online tool for parents and children — a Family Media Use Plan (www.HealthyChildren.org/MediaUsePlan) to help develop priorities to use media proactively.
