Screens and play

• What does play do for child development?

  Play isn't a by-product of learning, it's the main route to it. In free play a child does three things at once: builds and negotiates rules, delays an impulse, and tries on someone else's point of view by taking a role. Those three together form the foundation of what we later call attention, planning and emotional regulation. An adult's job isn't to run the play but to supply time, space and a few open-ended materials.

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• How much screen time should a child have?

  The World Health Organization recommends no screen time under one year old, and no more than one hour of sedentary screen time per day for ages two to four, noting that less is better. For school-age children there is no credible guideline giving a single number of minutes; the framework recommended instead is this: as long as screens aren't displacing sleep, physical activity, time together and schoolwork, duration is secondary. In practice the useful measure isn't the minutes but what the screen pushed out.

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