We’ve all seen it happen: a young child is having a tantrum in public. They get fussy, sitting in the seat of the grocery cart or waiting with their parents to board a plane. Their voice gets louder, their face goes red. They might start pulling things off the shelves at the store, kicking their seat or even their parents. But before the cranky child reaches full-blown meltdown mode, they’re pacified; a tablet appears before them, playing their favourite cartoon, Paw Patrol or Cocomelon and, like magic, the tantrum is forgotten. The child stares, wide-eyed at the screen. Everyone around them sighs, thankful that the meltdown was avoided. But the issue has just been punted down the road.

I’ve been studying children’s screentime since 2009. Back then, I was interested in how TV consumption was contributing to their early school readiness and development. My training is in developmental psychology, specifically psychoeducation, and I wanted to understand why some kids were thriving in kindergarten while others struggled.

I studied a sample of children born in 1998 who would have been preschoolers in the early 2000s—years before the introduction of tablets and smartphones. Our studies found that TV screentime contributed to children’s school readiness across the board: it was related to their cognitive readiness, their social readiness and their physical motor readiness. Kids who spent more hours per day watching television had less classroom engagement, more interpersonal problems with peers, lower number knowledge scores, a smaller vocabulary and worse motor development.

Of course, TV is no longer the default screen for kids. A 2025 report by Common Sense Media found that 40 per cent of toddlers have their own tablet by the time they’re two. Children in the two-to-four age range spent about two hours per day on screens, while those under two watch screens for about one hour per day. Researchers have linked excessive screentime to development delays in motor skills,........

© Macleans