Your Family

Why Sweden recommends that very young children should not have access to any digital devices

Swedish public health authorities aim to promote healthy development but some experts wonder whether parts of the guidance are unrealistic

Swedish authorities say there should be no screen time at all for children younger than two years old. Photograph: iStock
Amelia Nierenberg
Mon Sept 09 2024 - 06:01

Swedish public health authorities have recommended that children younger than two years old should not use any digital media, as parents, paediatricians and governments struggle to respond to the challenges of today’s tech-soaked world.

“We have to take back control,” said Jakob Forssmed, the minister of social affairs and public health, saying children had to be given “the ability to have a different kind of childhood”.

The intention of Sweden’s policy – and others like it – is to cut down on distractions, promote healthy development and help preserve the innocence of childhood.

But some experts wonder whether the guidance – however well-intentioned – may be too unrealistic and too judgmental to stick.

READ MORE

Here’s an overview of the debate.

Sweden’s recommendations

There are four main categories to Sweden’s new screen-time recommendations:

Duration: No screens for children younger than two years old, an hour maximum for children aged two to five, two hours for children aged six to 12, and three hours for teens.

Control: Sweden recommends following the age limits provided by social media and game companies, and that parents keep tabs on what their children use.

Sleep: No screens before bedtime, or in the bedroom. (That’s probably also a good move for adults, sleep scientists say.)

Self-reflection: Parents should think about their own screen time, which can cut into their interactions with their children – and set the tone for a child.

In a phone call, Forssmed described the recommendations as an effort to help families balance physical activity, relationships, schoolwork and sleep, and set healthy habits. He also wants to address what he called a “sleep crisis” for older children, which he said could lead to mental health challenges.

[ How screen time interferes with the parent-child dynamic ]

Other countries

Sweden’s guidance for toddlers and screens builds on similar recommendations elsewhere. Other countries suggest that the youngest children use screens only to video-chat with adults they know.

Paediatric health experts in Ireland and the United States recommend no screens before 18 months, save for video chats with adults they know. That jumps to two years old for experts in Canada and Australia, which, like Sweden, does not make exceptions for chats.

France may go further. President Emmanuel Macron commissioned a report, which was published in April, that recommended children younger than three have no exposure to screens – including television. (The report is titled, Children and Screens: In Search of Lost Time, a nod to Marcel Proust.)

The rationale

Many experts doubt that there is any educational benefit to screen use for children who are still learning to walk, talk, feel, socialise and navigate the world. Some also worry that too much passive screen time could make children less active during critical years.

“From a neurobiological point of view, there’s a massive amount going on in the first years of life,” said Sebastian Suggate, a professor of education at the University of Regensburg in Germany. “There’s just no substitute for the three-dimensional world for that.”

A study of about 7,100 mother-child pairs that was published last year in Jama Pediatrics found that more screen-time at age one was associated with developmental delays in communication and problem-solving when the children were between two and four.

“The most educational thing is another human being – who is not looking at a phone,” said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of psychology at Temple University.

Criticisms of the no-screens policy

Some researchers think the policy is simply unrealistic. What parent has not handed a fussy child a screen to keep them quiet in public, or to buy some much-needed alone time?

Prof Suggate said that longer working hours for parents, smaller family sizes, urbanisation and a general fear of letting children play alone outside mean that kids are often less able to amuse themselves.

Andrew Przybylski, professor of human behaviour and technology at the University of Oxford, said the bans could be “shaming” parents who have few other options to make a different choice. He also said that the amount of time is less important than the type of activities on a phone.

“It has a flawed part, which is about raw hours, which probably don’t matter,” he said of Sweden’s recommendations. “But it has really good common sense parts to it, which, again, is about the balance of the online world, the screen world and the offline world.”

School-age children

Sweden’s guidance comes as children begin the new academic year and efforts to restrict their access to screens take effect.

Many such efforts were influenced by a report published by Unesco in 2023 that found that smartphone use can disrupt classroom learning. The report said about one in four countries had a phone ban. A year later, it is now 30 per cent, Manos Antoninis, director of the report, said in a phone interview.

[ Parents and teachers on banning mobile phones in schools: ‘There are many much bigger issues’ ]

“Even just having a mobile phone nearby with notifications coming through is enough to result in students losing their attention from the task at hand,” Unesco said in a summary.

Sweden does not yet have a policy on phones in schools, Forssmed said. But it plans to soon, he said. – This article originally appeared in the New York Times