a new study points to alarming results

Since the beginnings of digital, many specialists have tried to warn about the dangers of screens for toddlers. Even if there are more and more alternatives to protect pre-teens and teenagers from the excesses of the Internet that they face, there are still many gray areas. A recent study has yielded enlightening results on the time children spend on screens. What emerges: disparities in particular according to the regions and the very young who are more and more exposed to them.

On Wednesday April 12, 2023, Public Health France published a report produced between 2013 and 2017 in France, so well before confinement. This report analyzed the average screen time of children aged 2 to 5.5 years. And the numbers are particularly shocking.

From the age of 2, children are very exposed to screens

So here’s what the study found: Children who are aged 2 year olds spend an average of 56 minutes a day in front of a screen. Logically, this time increases considerably when they grow up. Thus at 3 and a half years old, a child spends on average 1h20 a day in front of the screens and at 5 and a half years old it is 1h34. But that’s not the most worrying thing, indeed 11.2% of 2-year-old children spend more than 2 hours a day in front of a screen. For parents who follow the recommendations, i.e. no screens before the age of 3, this only represents 13.7% of 2-year-olds. And the figure collapses at 3 and a half years since only 2.5% of children of this age do not have access to the various screens.

The study highlights disparities between regions. In Hauts-de-France, two-year-old children spend an average of 1h04 per day in front of screens while Pays de la Loire is only 40 minutes away. The study also highlighted differences according to the level of education of the mother and the sex of the child. It remains to be seen why the level of study of the co-parent is not taken into account in this study.