New Screen Advice for Parents (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)

Looking for guidance for how your children should interact with those screens that are everywhere in today’s world? Then you’ve come to the right place. Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay     Musical Intro Introduction In the last few years, the American Association of Pediatrics (the AAP) has updated their “screen time” guidelines for children and I thought it was important for today’s parents to know what these experts are currently recommending. In the past the AAP recommendations stated that any screen-time for children under the age of two years was strictly forbidden-no ifs, ands, or buts. This recommendation created an uproar among parents as you can imagine. But things have changed recently. The AAP has modified their under two year old restriction as well as some of their other screen advice, noting the potential of screens to, connect families, foster imagination, and allow children to explore learning opportunities in safe controlled environments- under the guidance of adults of course. Summary of Current Research Current research serves as the guide to the newest AAP guidelines. As in the past, the latest research still confirms that screen time does not improve the language skills in children under 12 months of age and only marginally has benefit for children between 12-24 months of age in terms of language development. It is interactive language with others that is the basis of learning language in young children, not passive screen watching, pure and simple. Therefore, the AAP now recommends that children under the age of 18 months not have screen exposure except for video chatting. For children 18-24 months, they have loosened up and recommend that children in this age range should only have exposure to video chatting and high quality content that they consume with a parent or other adult. For children ages 2-5 years old, parents should allow no more than 1 hour a day of high quality content and should co-watch with their children. The research shows that the act of watching m