This report provides insight on parents’ concerns and understanding of the issue of children’s screen time use. It highlights what both children and parents feel are the challenges and benefits as they get older and become more proficient online. It also offers practical advice and resources to help parents make informed decisions to make screen time work for their family.
We provide background to the screen time debate that has come to focus solely on time spent rather than how children spend their time online and what impact this has on their development. We highlight the need for parents to ‘look both ways’ to help children explore the benefits but also mitigate the risks and manage their own behaviour to model healthy screen use for their children.
An outline of our research methodology to show how participants were screened to ensure they met our required criteria.
A summary of parents and children understanding of the benefits and challenges that screen time can bring and the nuanced nature of how this changes for children as they grow.
A summary of what parents told us they feel are the many benefits that screen time offers their children such as facilitating homework, providing downtime and driving creativity.
A summary of advice, resources, and tools available to help parents mitigate the risks screen time can bring but also take advantage of the opportunities that it can offer. For more advice, visit our screen time hub of advice.
See related advice and practical tips to support children online:
Government – Advice to manage children screen time