Your child works a tablet with practiced ease. Watching their fingers swipe across the glass, you can almost convince yourself they are learning something. Then you try to turn the video off, and the crying starts. Take the app away, and there is a meltdown. Each time, the same question surfaces: are we doing too much of this?
Most parents of five- and six-year-olds carry that question daily. "Limit screen time" is standard advice, but the harder questions — how many hours, what kind of use is fine, what isn't — often go unanswered. This article lays out what the most credible current guidelines and research actually say, and shows why the problem is more structurally complex than the single word "limits" suggests.