A Parent’s Guide to Better Screen Time

A New Way to Think About Screens

What the guidance actually says

The 2026 AAP guidance moved away from fixed screen-time limits.
What matters more than the clock is what a child is doing on the screen.
Passive screen time is consumption: an infinite feed, autoplay, no stopping point.
Active screen time produces something — a drawing, a story, a film — and ends when the thing is finished.
How to tell the two apart in practice, and what to do instead.