Screen Time and Child Development: It May Be More About How Than How Much

“How much screen time is too much?”

It is a question I regularly hear from parents. For international families in particular, screens can play a significant role in everyday life. Children may use them for schoolwork, gaming, keeping in touch with grandparents abroad, messaging friends in another country, watching programmes in their home language, or simply relaxing after a long school day.

At the same time, parents are frequently warned about the possible effects of too much screen time on children’s emotional wellbeing, behaviour and social development.

A large new study published in JAMA Network Open in August 2026 offers some interesting—and perhaps reassuring—findings. Rather than suggesting that all screen time is inherently harmful, the study indicates that the relationship between screens and child development is considerably more complex.

What did the researchers find?

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and Imperial College London analysed data from 3,786 children participating in the long-running Growing Up in Scotland study.

They looked at children’s out-of-school screen use at ages 5, 10 and 15 and compared this with measures of psychosocial development, including emotional, behavioural and social difficulties.

One of the most important findings was that screen time itself was not consistently associated with poorer development.

At ages 5 and 10, the researchers found no significant association between the amount of screen use and developmental difficulties. At age 15, increased difficulties were only associated with very high levels of electronic gaming—not with screen use in general.

Children who had high levels of screen use when younger did show more difficulties at age 10, but importantly, this association was no longer present by age 15.

In other words, the findings do not support a simple equation of:

more screen time = poorer mental health or development.

The social media finding may surprise parents

Perhaps one of the most unexpected findings concerned teenagers and social media.

Fifteen-year-olds who spent more than an hour per day using social media were actually less likely to have above-average emotional, behavioural or social difficulties than teenagers who used social media for less than an hour.

This certainly does not mean that more social media is automatically better for teenagers.

The researchers could not determine cause and effect. It may be that socially confident teenagers are simply more likely to communicate with friends online. However, it also highlights something that can easily get lost in discussions about screen time: screens can support relationships as well as interfere with them.

For an international child or teenager, this may be particularly relevant.

WhatsApp, FaceTime, gaming and social media can allow a young person to maintain friendships after an international move, speak regularly with grandparents living in another country, communicate with friends in their first language, or remain connected to an important part of their identity.

That is very different from spending several hours alone scrolling through content that leaves them anxious, upset or unable to sleep.

Both count as “screen time”, but psychologically they are not necessarily the same experience.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question

Instead of only asking:

“How many hours has my child been on a screen?”

it may be more useful to ask:

“What is my child doing on the screen, and what effect is it having on their life?”

As a psychologist, I would be more interested in whether screen use is beginning to replace important developmental experiences.

For example, is your child:

• getting enough sleep?

• moving their body and spending time outside?

• maintaining friendships and interacting with people face-to-face?

• participating in family life?

• able to stop using a device without extreme conflict?

• keeping up with school responsibilities?

• engaging in hobbies and activities away from screens?

• generally feeling better, worse or unchanged after spending time online?

Context matters.

An hour spent gaming cooperatively with friends is not necessarily equivalent to an hour of passive scrolling. A teenager messaging an old friend after moving to the Netherlands is doing something different from a child watching short-form videos alone late at night.

Screen use can also tell us something

There is another important point for parents: sometimes heavy screen use is not the cause of a problem but may be a signal that something else is going on.

A child who is struggling socially at a new international school may retreat into gaming because online friendships feel easier. A teenager experiencing anxiety may spend more time watching videos as a way of avoiding difficult situations. A child with ADHD may find fast-paced digital activities particularly rewarding and then have significant difficulty transitioning away from them.

Simply removing the device does not necessarily address the underlying difficulty.

This is why it is important to look at the whole child rather than one behaviour in isolation.

What should parents do?

The findings are reassuring, but they are not an argument for unlimited screen use.

Children still need sleep, physical activity, face-to-face communication, opportunities to tolerate boredom, imaginative play, family interaction and time outdoors. Younger children in particular learn through active interaction with the people and physical world around them.

Instead of becoming overly focused on counting every minute, however, families may benefit from creating healthy boundaries around when, where and how screens are used.

For example, keeping devices away during meals can protect family conversation. Avoiding screens close to bedtime can help protect sleep. Parents can take an interest in what their children are watching, playing and discussing online rather than focusing exclusively on duration.

And when rules are needed, it can help to explain why they exist.

“Put your phone away because you've had your two hours” can easily become a battle about minutes.

“Phones stay downstairs at night because your brain needs sleep” communicates a much clearer purpose.

A note of caution about the study

Like all research, this study has limitations.

The children were part of a Scottish cohort, and data collection began in 2009. The digital environment children experience in 2026 is considerably different. TikTok, short-form video, algorithm-driven feeds and today's highly immersive online games were not part of early childhood for many of the children studied.

The study also cannot tell us that screen use is harmless for every individual child.

What it does tell us is that screen time is probably too broad a concept to use on its own when trying to understand children's wellbeing.

The takeaway for international families

Parents do not need to panic because their child has spent longer than planned playing Minecraft on a rainy Sunday—or because their teenager spends an hour chatting with friends online.

Look at the bigger picture.

What are they doing online?

Who are they doing it with?

What are they getting from it?

And, importantly, what is screen use replacing?

If your child is sleeping well, participating in school, maintaining relationships, being physically active and enjoying activities away from screens, the number of minutes on a device may be less meaningful than we have sometimes been led to believe.

If screens are consistently interfering with sleep, school, friendships, family relationships or emotional wellbeing—or if attempts to stop lead to significant distress—it is worth looking more closely.

Ultimately, screens are now part of childhood. The goal does not necessarily need to be to eliminate them or to achieve a perfect number of minutes each day.

The more useful goal may be helping children learn to develop a healthy relationship with technology—one in which screens add something to their lives without gradually taking the place of everything else.

Baumgarten Child Psychology and More supports international children, adolescents and families living in the Netherlands with questions relating to development, learning, attention, behaviour and emotional wellbeing.

Reference: McQuaid M, et al. (2026). Study examining screen use and emotional, behavioural and social development in children. JAMA Network Open.