Why what children watch, how they watch it and how they respond may be just as important as the number of minutes.
Written by Ashleigh O’Connor, BCBA, CBA, Behaviour Support Practitioner
Founder & Clinical Director, Mosaic Early Intervention
Screen time is one of those parenting topics where everyone seems to have an opinion, and somehow, whatever you’re doing can feel like the wrong thing.
Too much TV. No screens before bed. iPads are overstimulating. Educational shows are okay. Screens are bad for attention. Screens are fine in moderation. The advice can feel endless, and for parents trying to do the right thing, it can become another thing to worry about.
But something I’ve found myself thinking about a lot lately, both as someone who works in child development and as a parent, is whether we’re sometimes asking the wrong question. We tend to talk about screen time as a number: “How many minutes did they have today?”
But is 30 minutes watching a familiar television show really the same experience as 30 minutes moving between games, videos and apps on an iPad?
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What if one type of screen use seems to leave your child restless and struggling to transition, while another seems to help them slow down after a busy day? And what about the things children can learn from what they watch, particularly when we talk about it with them and connect it back to their own world?
These were questions I wanted to look into more closely. And when I started digging into the research, what I found was far more nuanced than “screens are good” or “screens are bad.”
How long children spend using screens is still important, particularly when screens begin replacing sleep, movement, play, communication and time with other people. But researchers are also looking at what children are watching, how they’re engaging with it, the device they’re using, who they’re watching with and the context around it.
Then there’s another piece that is particularly important to us at Mosaic: the individual child. Because two children can have the same screen, the same show and the same 30 minutes, and have very different experiences.
So perhaps instead of only asking: “How much screen time is too much?” We should also be asking: “What does screen time actually look like for my child?”
Thirty minutes isn’t always the same thirty minutes
Imagine two children who have both had 30 minutes of “screen time”. One has been sitting on the lounge watching a familiar, age appropriate television show. It has a storyline, familiar characters and a clear beginning and end. Maybe Mum or Dad has been nearby and they’ve chatted about something happening in the episode. Another child has spent 30 minutes on a handheld device moving between games, videos and different pieces of content, with the ability to swipe, click, change activities and access something new whenever they want.
On paper, both children have had exactly 30 minutes of screen time. But are those experiences really the same? Increasingly, researchers are looking beyond screen time as one single measure.
A large 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis published in JAMA Pediatrics looked at 100 studies involving more than 176,000 children under six. Rather than only asking how long children spent using screens, researchers examined things such as the content children were viewing, whether adults were watching with them, background television and caregiver screen use.
They found different associations depending on the type and context of screen use. Age inappropriate content was associated with poorer psychosocial outcomes, while co-viewing with caregivers was associated with better cognitive outcomes. Having television playing in the background was associated with poorer cognitive outcomes.
It’s important to put those findings into perspective. Many of the associations were small, and much of the research in this area is observational. That means we can’t see an association and automatically conclude that screens caused the outcome. It also doesn’t mean that the amount of screen time is irrelevant. What it does tell us is that looking at the number of minutes alone doesn’t give us the whole picture.
Children can learn from what they watch
We also don’t think we need to treat television as though children are getting nothing from it. Children can encounter new words, ideas, emotions, social situations and experiences through age appropriate content. Research into children’s media use has also highlighted the potential value of age-appropriate content and caregiver involvement.
There’s something really practical we can take from that: Talk to your children about what they’re watching.
You don’t need to sit beside them analysing every episode. Sometimes the whole point of putting the television on is that you need to cook dinner, have a shower or drink a coffee while it’s still hot!
But there are so many natural opportunities to connect what children see on television with their real world.
You might say:
“How do you think she feels?”
“What do you think is going to happen next?”
“That’s like what happened when we went to Grandma’s house!”
“Remember when you felt like that?”
In my own family, my kids love the Hammerbarn episode of Bluey. We talk about how Hammerbarn is like Bunnings, and when we actually go to Bunnings they’ll notice all the similarities between what we’re doing and what they’ve seen in the episode.
It creates such a lovely and natural opportunity for learning. They’re connecting something they’ve watched on a screen with their own experiences, language and understanding of the world around them.
It doesn’t mean every television show is educational, and television certainly doesn’t replace learning through real life interaction (I promise, my kids watch some absolute dribble sometimes). It just shows how something a child has seen on a screen can become part of conversation, shared experiences and learning outside of the screen too.
What about TV compared with an iPad?
This is another area where I think we need to be careful about putting every screen experience into the same category. Watching a television show can be quite a different experience from using a touchscreen device where a child can continuously choose, swipe, click, change videos or receive immediate responses to what they’re doing.
Research is increasingly examining these kinds of contextual differences rather than treating all digital engagement as interchangeable. It doesn’t mean we can confidently say “TV is good and iPads are bad.” We can’t.
It’s also worth being cautious about some of the explanations we commonly see online. You’ll often hear that rapidly changing content gives children “dopamine hits” or that fast paced television is “overstimulating their brains”. Those explanations sound convincing, but the research is far more complicated.
A 2025 meta-analysis of 19 studies looking specifically at the immediate effects of media pacing found no consistent overall effect of fast-paced media on children’s attention or executive functioning. Fantastical content was associated with a small immediate reduction in performance on some attention and executive-function tasks, but there was considerable variation between studies.
So rather than trying to label a particular type of screen as universally “good”, “bad”, “calming” or “overstimulating”, we can look more closely at what the screen experience involves and how the individual child responds to it.
The child in front of you is important too
This is the part that particularly interests us at Mosaic. We know that children are wonderfully different. They have different temperaments, sensory preferences, communication skills, attention profiles, interests, learning histories and ways of responding to the world around them.
From a behaviour-analytic perspective, we’re also interested in what screen use actually looks like for the individual child.
Research published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis has demonstrated individual differences in children’s preferences for leisure activities, including screen based technology. Other JABA research has shown that the way children engage with an iPad can change when that experience is structured differently.
For example, one study worked with three children with autism who had developed repetitive patterns of playing the same applications on an iPad. When researchers introduced an activity schedule within the iPad, the children increased the variety of applications they used.
That study doesn’t tell us that structured iPad use is better for children’s development, nor does it compare iPads with television. But it demonstrates something important from a behavioural perspective: the device alone doesn’t tell us everything about the behaviour occurring around it.
This brings us back to something we come back to often at Mosaic: Look at the individual child and the behaviour you’re actually seeing.
One child might watch something for half an hour, happily turn it off and go straight back to playing. Another child may find that transition incredibly difficult. You might notice your child becomes increasingly restless after certain types of screen use. Or perhaps you’ve noticed the opposite: your child curls up on the couch with a familiar television show and their whole body seems to slow down. Instead of immediately deciding that either response is good or bad, we can get curious about it.
Observe. Get curious. Look for patterns.
This is something we use constantly in behaviour support. If you’re wondering how screen use fits into your child’s day, start noticing what happens around it.
What were they like beforehand?
What did they watch or do?
How long did they use it?
What happened when it was time to finish?
What did they do afterwards?
You might naturally notice that shorter and longer periods of screen use seem to be followed by different responses. You might notice that transitioning away from the television is generally easy, while transitioning away from a particular game is much harder. Or you might notice that the type of screen doesn’t seem to make much difference at all.
You don’t need to make a judgement based on one afternoon either. Children’s behaviour is influenced by so many things, sleep, hunger, illness, sensory needs, changes in routine, demands, excitement, individual tolerance levels, and everything else happening in their day.
Look for patterns, not perfection. One hard afternoon doesn’t tell us very much.
Caregiver involvement is also an important part of behaviour-analytic practice and research. A 2024 Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis scoping review looked at 228 behaviour-analytic studies involving children or caregivers and found caregivers were involved in some capacity in 96.1% of them. Interestingly, caregiver collected data were much less common, and the authors identified this as an area for further research.
For us, asking a parent to jot down a few observations isn’t about turning home into a research lab. It’s about making something that can feel quite subjective a little easier to see. You may look back across a week and suddenly think… Actually, the difficult transitions are nearly always after this particular type of screen use.
Or you might realise… I thought screen time was causing this, but looking at the week, the harder afternoons were also the days they were exhausted after swimming lessons following a big day at school.
Connecting these dots and patterns gives us some really useful information. It still doesn’t prove that a screen caused a particular behaviour. What it can do is help us ask better questions about your child and how day to day activities impact them.
What if television actually seems to calm my child?
This is something I’ve found particularly interesting through both working with children and being a parent.
Some children really do appear to settle when they’re watching something familiar and predictable. You can sometimes see their bodies slow down and, for some children, having that familiar sound and storyline seems easier than being expected to suddenly switch off in complete silence.
If you’ve noticed this with your child, I don’t think it needs to automatically become another thing to feel guilty about. But this is also where we need to be really clear about the difference between what we observe and what research has established.
We don’t currently have strong enough evidence to recommend television as a regulation or sleep strategy for children generally. We also don’t have strong enough evidence to say that children with ADHD should use television to help their brains switch off.
So rather than assuming that a familiar show is regulating their nervous system, we can describe what we can actually see:
My child appears calmer.
Their body is relaxing and slowing down.
They stop moving around the room.
They fall asleep more easily.
Then look at the bigger picture.
Are they sleeping well overall? Are they getting enough sleep? Does the same thing happen with every type of screen, or only certain content? Does it make bedtime easier but sleep later in the night harder? What happens when the routine changes?
Those observations can tell us far more about what is happening for that child than assuming screens will always be either calming or stimulating.
Sometimes the better question is: what is the screen replacing?
This may be one of the most useful questions we can ask.
Rather than only: “How many minutes has my child watched today?”
Try: “What would they otherwise be doing during this time?”
If screens are regularly replacing sleep, movement, imaginative play, outdoor experiences, communication or time interacting with other people, that’s worth paying attention to. But again, context is important.
Twenty minutes of television while a tired child decompresses after preschool is a different context from screen use consistently taking the place of opportunities for play and interaction throughout the day.
There’s also an interesting difference between intentionally watching something and having a screen constantly running in the background. The 2024 JAMA Pediatrics review found that background television was associated with poorer cognitive outcomes. Caregiver screen use during children’s routines was also associated with poorer psychosocial outcomes.
So sometimes turning off the television that nobody is actually watching and getting down on the floor to play may be more useful than worrying about whether today’s favourite episode lasted 22 minutes.
You don’t have to be a “screen-free family”
And you don’t have to be an “anything goes” family either. There’s a lot of space in between. You might decide that certain types of handheld or short form content don’t seem to work well for your child, but you’re comfortable with familiar television shows.
Another family might use an iPad for communication, learning, downtime or travel and find that it fits well into their child’s life. You might even have different boundaries for different children in the same family because you’ve noticed they respond differently. That is absolutely ok, as long as it works for your child and your family.
We don’t need to turn this into another parenting competition. We can make thoughtful choices about content, protect children’s opportunities for sleep, movement, play and connection, watch together sometimes, talk about what they’re seeing and pay attention to what happens for the individual child.
Perhaps instead of only asking: “How much screen time is too much?”
we can also ask:
What are they watching?
How are they watching it?
What is it replacing?
And how does my child respond?
Those questions give us a much richer picture of what’s actually happening.
Curious about what screen time looks like for your child?
We’ve created a free Mosaic Screen Time & Behaviour Tracker to help you observe your child’s screen use across a week.
There are no special data skills needed. Jot down what they watched or did, approximately how long they used it, what they were like beforehand, what happened afterwards and how they responded when it was time to stop.
You don’t need to record every screen or every minute. The idea is to collect enough information to start noticing whether anything keeps showing up.
Observe. Get curious. Look for patterns.
And if you get to the end of the week and find yourself thinking… I have absolutely no idea what any of this means…
That is exactly what we are here for.
Sometimes patterns are easy to spot. Sometimes they’re not. If you’d like support understanding your child’s development or behaviour, or working out strategies that fit your child and family, our team at Mosaic can help.
Screen Time Behaviour Tracker
Download your copy of our Screen Time Beahviour Tracker below.
A note about the research
Research into children’s screen use is developing rapidly. Much of the existing research identifies associations between screen use and developmental outcomes rather than demonstrating that screen exposure directly causes those outcomes.
Children’s development also takes place within the context of their relationships, environments, routines, opportunities for play and learning, and individual differences.
This article isn’t suggesting that screen time recommendations should be ignored or that unlimited screen use is harmless. Instead, we hope it encourages families to consider screen use as more than a number and to think about duration alongside content, context and the individual child.
This article is intended as general information and is not a replacement for individual developmental, behavioural or medical advice.
References
Becraft, J. L., Hardesty, S. L., Goldman, K. J., Shawler, L. A., Edelstein, M. L., & Orchowitz, P. (2024). Caregiver involvement in applied behavior-analytic research: A scoping review and discussion. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 57(1), 55–70. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.1035
Bourke, M., Maddren, C. I., Sippel, F., & Thomas, G. (2026). Within-person association between daily screen use and sleep in youth: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Pediatrics, 180(5), 500–509. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.6490
Brodhead, M. T., Courtney, W. T., & Thaxton, J. R. (2018). Using activity schedules to promote varied application use in children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 51(1), 80–86. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.435
Carson, V., Boyd, M., Zheng, Y., Rinaldi, C. M., Moldenhauer, R., Potter, M., Rai, J., Li, J., Dorn, K., & Wiebe, S. (2026). Screen time patterns and cognitive development among preschool children. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 71(4), 108420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2026.108420
Hinten, A. E., Scarf, D., & Imuta, K. (2025). Meta-analytic review of the short-term effects of media exposure on children’s attention and executive functions. Developmental Science, 28(6), e70069. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70069
Mallawaarachchi, S., Burley, J., Mavilidi, M., Howard, S. J., Straker, L., Kervin, L., Staton, S., Hayes, N., Machell, A., Torjinski, M., Brady, B., Thomas, G., Horwood, S., White, S. L. J., Zabatiero, J., Rivera, C., & Cliff, D. (2024). Early childhood screen use contexts and cognitive and psychosocial outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Pediatrics, 178(10), 1017–1026. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.2620
Nwachukwu, E. C., Nigam, A., Sekar Lakshmisai, S., Sakarkar, P., Bheemaneni, R. S., & Malasevskaia, I. (2025). Impact of screen time on language development and vocabulary acquisition in early childhood: A systematic review. Cureus, 17(11), e97429. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.97429
Slanzi, C. M., Graziano, M., D’Angelo, G., Vollmer, T. R., & Conine, D. E. (2020). Relative preferences for edible and leisure stimuli in children with autism: A replication in Italy. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 53, 2429–2439. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.666