Screen time

The short version

There is official advice for children under 5. It was published in March 2026.
For ages 5 to 16 there is no official advice yet. It was promised for autumn 2026.
The clearest finding so far is not about how long. It is about what, and who with.

What has the government actually said?

Two different things, and it matters which is which.

For under-5s, guidance exists. It was published on 27 March 2026 by the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, after an expert group reviewed the evidence.

For 5 to 16, it does not exist yet. On 8 June 2026 the government announced it was writing some, and opened a three-week call for evidence. It said the guidance would be published "this autumn".

So if you read an article confidently telling you the government's screen time rules for a seven-year-old, be careful. As of now, there are none.

⚠️ We will update this page when the real guidance is published.

The under-5s advice, in plain words

Three things came out of it clearly.

Under 2: screens on their own do not help. The expert view is that children under two gain no benefit from using any kind of media by themselves. Screens shared with an adult — a video call with a grandparent, looking at photos together — are a different thing.

Watching with an adult beats watching alone. This is the strongest finding, and it is not about time at all. When a parent watches with a child and talks about it, asking questions, naming things, that is linked to better development than the same child watching alone.

Slow beats fast. Slow-paced content is better for a young child's development than the fast, scrolling, social-media style of video.

Notice what is missing: a number of minutes. The advice is about the kind of screen use, not the quantity. That is a deliberate choice, and the government has said the 5 to 16 guidance will avoid blanket rules too.

So what should I actually do?

Here is what follows from the evidence above, said plainly.

Worry about what, before you worry about how long. Half an hour of endless short videos and half an hour of a puzzle your child has to think about are not the same half hour. Treating them as the same is the mistake most rules make.

Sit with them sometimes. You do not have to do it always. But watching together, and talking about it, is the thing with the best evidence behind it.

Think about sleep. Sleep is one of the things the government has said the new guidance will cover, alongside scrolling, social media and learning. We are not going to tell you how much screens cost your child's sleep, because the official answer is not published yet and there is a lot of confident writing about it that is not backed by anything. What we would say is that if your child is not sleeping well, screens in the bedroom in the evening are the first thing worth trying to change.

Have a finish, not a limit. "Two more levels" or "to the end of the episode" causes far fewer arguments than "twenty minutes", because the child can see the end coming. A timer helps if it is the timer saying stop rather than you.

Look at your own. Children copy. This is annoying and true.

Things that genuinely reduce arguments

What	Why
A visible timer	The clock becomes the one saying stop, not you. Sand timers work well for young children
An alarm clock for the bedroom	It removes the last reason to have a phone by the bed
A charging spot downstairs	Everyone's devices, including yours, live there overnight
Something to do instead	"Stop" works much better when there is a "start" attached to it

🔒 Two things we will not recommend, and the line we are drawing. We are not going to point you at parental control software or tracking devices. Those are safety products — if they do not work as promised, a child is less safe, and we have not tested them.

A timer, a clock and a board game are a different kind of object. They cannot fail dangerously, and you can see what they are. We have not tested those either, and we are not claiming any of them will change your child's behaviour. They are suggestions, and we earn if you buy one.

Is what my child plays on our site any different?

We think so, and here is the argument. You can decide whether you buy it.

A CrumbJar daily puzzle has a start and an end. You do it, it is done, and there is nothing else served up. There is no feed, no autoplay, no next video loading while you decide. You cannot buy your way to an advantage, and there is no reason to come back sooner than tomorrow.

That is a deliberate design and it is close to what the under-5s advice points at: something you do attentively, that finishes.

But it is still a screen, and if your child has had enough screen today then they have had enough. Our puzzle will still be there tomorrow. That is rather the point of a daily.

What about school?

Two things are already settled.

There is a legal requirement for phone-free classrooms. Schools also have to filter and monitor what children can reach on school devices.

The government is separately looking at safety checks for technology used in schools, including AI tools, with consultations promised.

If you want to know your own school's rules on phones and devices, ask for their policy. They will have one.

What not to do

Do not make screens the reward and the punishment. If the tablet is what your child earns for being good and loses for being bad, it becomes the most important object in the house. That is the opposite of what you want.

Do not go from four hours to zero on a Monday. It will not hold, and the failure will make the next attempt harder.

Do not assume all screen time is a loss. The government's own position is that technology is part of childhood and brings real benefits when it is used well, including for children with additional needs. Nearly all parents say their child benefits from being online. The worry is concentrated on social media and endless video, not on everything.

Where this comes from

New guidance on screen use for children aged 5–16, Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care, 8 June 2026. This is the announcement of a call for evidence. The guidance itself was not published at the time of writing.
Screen use by children aged under five, the independent report from the Early Years Screen Time Advisory Group, and the guidance for parents of under-5s published 27 March 2026.

⚠️ This page will need updating in autumn 2026 when the 5 to 16 guidance appears. If you are reading this after then and it still says "not published", tell us.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

About us

And who we are: CrumbJar is a British puzzle-games studio. We make daily word and number games that children and adults play on a screen, and the games are free. So we have an interest in you thinking well of screens, and an interest in you buying things through our links. We would rather you knew that than found out.