The other day, while I was doing some household chores, I handed my youngest child his dad's iPad to keep him entertained. But after a while I suddenly felt uneasy: I wasn't keeping a close eye on how long he had spent using it or what he was looking at. So I told him it was time to stop.

A full-blown tantrum erupted. He kicked, he yelled, he clung to it and tried to push me away with the might of a furious under-five. Not my finest hour as a parent, admittedly, and his extreme reaction bothered me.

My older children are navigating social media, virtual reality and online gaming, and sometimes that concerns me too. I hear them tease each other about needing to "touch grass" – disconnect from the tech and get outdoors.

The late Steve Jobs, who was CEO of Apple when the firm released the iPad, famously didn't let his own children have them. Bill Gates has said he restricted his children's access to tech too.

Screen time has become synonymous with bad news, blamed for rises in depression in young people, behavioural problems and sleep deprivation. The renowned neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield went as far as to say that internet use and computer games can harm the adolescent brain.

Back in 2013 she compared the negative effects of prolonged screen time to the early days of climate change: a significant shift that people weren't taking seriously.

Plenty of people are taking it more seriously now. But warnings about the dark side might not tell the full story.

An editorial in the British Medical Journal argued that Baroness Greenfield's claims around the brain were "not based on a fair scientific appraisal of the evidence… and are misleading to parents and the public at large".

Now, another group of UK scientists claim that concrete scientific evidence on the downsides of screens is lacking. So have we got it wrong when it comes to worrying about our children and curbing their access to tablets and smartphones?

Pete Etchells, a psychology professor at Bath Spa University, is one of the academics in the group arguing that the evidence is lacking.

He has analysed hundreds of studies about screen time and mental health, along with large amounts of data about young people and their screen habits. In his book Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time, he argues that the science behind the headline-grabbing conclusions is a mixed bag and, in many cases, flawed.

"Concrete scientific evidence to back up stories about the terrible outcomes of screen time simply isn't there," he writes.

Research published by the American Psychology Association in 2021 told a similar story.

The 14 authors, from various universities around the world, analysed 33 studies published between 2015 and 2019. Screen use including smartphones, social media and video games played "little role in mental health concerns", they found.

And while some studies have suggested blue light - such as that emitted by screens - makes it harder to drift off because it suppresses the hormone melatonin, a 2024 review of 11 studies from around the world found no overall evidence that screen light in the hour before bed makes it more difficult to........

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