The UK's first screen time guidance for under-5s

Until March 2026, the UK had no official screen time guidance for young children. The RCPCH's 2019 position was deliberately non-prescriptive: no fixed limits, use your judgement as a family. That's now changed.

Who wrote it

The Early Years Screen Time Advisory Group was co-chaired by Dame Rachel de Souza (Children's Commissioner for England) and Professor Russell Viner from UCL, and commissioned jointly by the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care (Early Years Screen Time Advisory Group (EYSTAG), 2026). The report runs to 50 pages and draws on systematic reviews of existing research.

The headline numbers

For children under 2, screen time is "best avoided" except for shared activities that support family bonding and learning. Video calls with grandparents, for instance, would fall into that exception.

For children aged 2 to 5, the recommendation is a maximum of one hour per day, ideally less. That's a specific number, which puts the UK closer to the WHO's 2019 position than to the AAP's recent decision to drop time limits entirely.

Beyond the numbers

The more useful parts of the report are the design-level recommendations. The group found that co-viewing with active adult engagement, talking about what's on screen, asking questions, connecting content to real experiences, tends to improve language and thinking skills and reduce risks of harm (Early Years Screen Time Advisory Group (EYSTAG), 2026).

On content design, they recommend slower-paced content that focuses on faces, uses limited movement and simple backgrounds, and includes repetition. The reasoning: younger children need more time to process what they're seeing. Fast-paced content with rapid scene changes uses up cognitive resources that could otherwise support learning.

Screen-free periods for the whole family, particularly at mealtimes, were also recommended. The "whole family" part matters. It's harder to enforce a rule for the 3-year-old when everyone else is on their phone.

The context

The report arrives alongside some sobering data. UK toddlers are now spending close to seven hours a day on screens, according to recent reporting (MadeForMums, 2026). That's a long way from one hour.

The guidance doesn't frame this as a crisis. It presents practical steps: choose calmer content, watch together when you can, protect mealtimes, keep screens out of bedrooms. It's measured guidance, not moral panic.

For a broader view of how the UK and US guidance compare, see the screen time rules just changed.