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The Digital Childhood Dilemma
Over the past decade, the touchscreen has become the default pacifier for millions of underfives. Since 2012, the share of households with an internet-connected mobile device has more than doubled in both OECD and upper-middle-income economies (OECD, 2019), turning every living room, bus queue and waiting room into a potential media hub. Today, the average preschooler spends about two hours a day in front of a screen—twice the World Health Organisation’s 1-hour limit for 2 to 5-year-olds (WHO, 2019). Recent studies on every continent show that overshooting the guideline is no longer the exception but the rule:
• South Asia – Chandigarh, India 59 %; suburban Sri Lanka 60 % exceed > 1 h/day
• South-East Asia – urban Selangor, Malaysia 91 % exceed > 1 h/day
• Western Pacific – Guangdong, China 67 % exceed > 1 h/day
• Europe & Eastern Mediterranean – Metropolitan Istanbul (Türkiye) 49 % ex-
ceed WHO limit
• Americas – NHIS, United States 47 % exceed > 2 h leisure/day; Ceará, Brazil 69 % exceed WHO limit; national Colombia 50 % exceed > 2 h/day; Mexico City ≈ 70 % exceed > 2 h/day
• Africa – urban centres, Ethiopia 62 % exceed > 1 h/day
Across these diverse settings, excessive early exposure is repeatedly linked to slower language growth, weaker attention regulation, poorer social competence, reduced motor coordination and disrupted, healthy sleep (e.g., Raj et al. 2022; Geng et al. 2023). The challenge facing parents, educators and policymakers is, therefore, no longer whether young children should encounter screens, but how to shape use so that digital opportunity does not crowd out the developmental experiences on which lifelong learning depends.
