No Digital Media for Tots, According to Sweden

Bad news for parents that use screentime to get a breather. According to guidelines issued by the Swedish Public Health Agency, tots shouldn't be getting any screen time. It's a little more lenient for older kids.

The new guidelines urge parents to limit digital media use for children. These recommendations suggest no screen time for children under the age of two and no more than one to three hours per day for older children, depending on age.

Additionally, they recommend keeping screens out of bedrooms at night to encourage healthy sleep habits. The guidelines stress the importance of balancing screen time with physical activity, relationships, and schoolwork. Parents are encouraged to monitor content, follow age restrictions, and set healthy screen habits.

The recommendations also call for tech companies to be more responsible in preventing exposure to harmful content, emphasizing the need to prioritize children's health and safety.

These guidelines echo what many child experts have been saying for years. Recent studies have backed up the fact that your littles need to get away from the screen: 

• A 2022 BioMed Central Public Health and a 2019 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics found that preschoolers exposed to more screen time were more likely to be “developmentally vulnerable.”
• A JAMA Pediatrics 2023 study found that children aged three to five who were regularly calmed by their parents using mobile devices showed increased emotional reactivity and reduced cognitive function.
• Another 2023 Journal of Adolescent Health study found that children aged 9 to 10 were more likely to develop obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) if they had higher total screen time. exposure, especially related to video games or watching videos.

Limiting screentime can be a struggle. Here are some tips from Ashley Harlow, Ph.D., MBA, a licensed child and adolescent psychologist at Children’s Nebraska in Omaha and of four.

Have conversations with kids about what you are doing on your phone. Just the other day, I was about to text my wife about what the kids and I were making the family for dinner, and the first thing out of my 10-year-old’s mouth was, “And you don’t need to get on Instagram, Dad!”

It's easy for kids and spouses to assume you are doing something fun or social on your phone. When they see you pick up your phone and start swiping, they might assume you are catching up with friends or browsing TikTok. Just as often (if not more often!), parents are working or engaging in activities on their phones to support the everyday functioning of their families.

Consider talking about these activities and involving your kids in them. Let them know you are communicating with their coaches and teachers or buying another case of sanitizer wipes for their classroom. Phones are not all fun and games, but valuable tools to keep functioning efficiently. 

Establish “sacred times” where phones are not allowed, and model that habit. In our home, this is very hard to do! We have dinner together as a family most nights, and although this is a time for us to talk about our days and upcoming events, it also feels necessary to occasionally pull out our phones to order that next size up in shin guards or leotards.

Modeling happens every minute of every day. If parents establish exceptions to sacred times of no phone use, kids will also likely learn that they can establish exceptions as well. 

Set up routines around “doing chores” on your phone. So many parenting duties can be accomplished on a smartphone, from shopping to coordinating carpools to syncing phone calendars with the dance studio app. Involve kids in these processes so they understand that many of the things you are doing on your phone are devoted to them for their benefit. Also, containing these activities to dedicated times models healthy phone hygiene. 

Model healthy routines broadly, especially around everyday activities that compete with phone use. Phone use might have direct effects on mental health, but it also has clear indirect effects on sleep, physical activity, time spent in person with friends, and other important domains of life.

Regardless of how much time a parent spends on the phone, they can also model healthy habits around social time with friends and family, healthy sleep hygiene and exercise.

Cope with “FOMO” positively. One of the sources of anxiety that social media can tap into is fear of missing out, also known as FOMO. Parents might be able to address this factor with kids by sharing their own experiences with social media.

Specifically, talk positively about the fun things their friends and family are sharing on social media and model being happy and supportive of those activities. Not every family goes to Disney every year; seeing the pictures our friends post lets us share their joy, rather than being jealous of the time they are having!

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