Screen time, and what actually matters

The number was never the point

For most of the last decade, the advice you heard about screens was a number of minutes. It was easy to remember and easy to act on, and that is largely why it stuck.

Paediatric guidance has moved steadily away from that. The American Academy of Pediatrics now frames the question around what is on the screen, who is in the room and what the screen is replacing, rather than a daily allowance. Half an hour of reading together is not the same activity as half an hour of something that plays on its own.

We are describing the direction of that guidance rather than quoting it, so it is worth reading their own words in the AAP’s family media plan. TaleTykes is not affiliated with the American Academy of Pediatrics, has not been reviewed by them, and is not endorsed by anybody.

Three questions instead of one

• What is on it

  A book is not a feed. There is no next item lined up behind this one, no recommendation engine waiting for the last page, and nothing that plays on its own. When your child finishes a book, the screen stops.

• Who is in the room

  The strongest thing in the reading research is an adult asking a child about the story, not software. We write a question for every page, of the kind you would ask, and put them in your half of the app.

• When it happens

  The hour before sleep is the least disputed part of the advice. You can set a bedtime window. Inside it, the screen dims to a warm night light, the voice slows down, and a sleep timer ends the reading rather than leaving your child to decide when to stop.

What we do not do, on purpose

A reading app can hold a child’s attention with the same machinery a game uses, and several reading apps do. Everything in this list works, and we could have built all of it. None of it is here.

• No notifications. Nothing we do can make a device buzz. We ask for push permission nowhere in your child’s half of the product, and a test fails the build if a request appears.
• Nothing plays on its own. There is no autoplay, no next episode and no countdown to whatever follows. Every step onwards follows a tap that somebody made.
• No scores and no timers. We never tell your child how quickly they read, how many answers they got right, or how they compare with anybody else, and we never mark reading aloud.
• No streak that asks for another day. We state a run of days as a fact when it happens and never use it to ask for one more. It never mentions a day that was missed, and it stops being shown rather than turning into a number about the past.
• No emails to bring anybody back. Every message we send is about the account or about a book that somebody asked for. We send no re-engagement email, and the footer of every message says so.

The controls a grown-up has

• A daily reading limit, set separately for each child. When your child reaches it, the app says the books will be here later, which is true, and then it stops.
• A bedtime window, with the night light, the slower voice and the sleep timer inside it.
• The age group, the reading level, the language the stories are written in, and the themes your child should never be given.
• Whether we use what your child does to choose what they see next. This is off until you turn it on.
• A weekly note, if you want one, saying what was actually read. It is opt-in, and it is the only regular message we send.