Andrew Przybylski și Netta Weinstein

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1. 01

   The right question is not 'how much screen' but 'what does the screen take out of the budget': moderate doses were not associated with harm, and the measured harm shows up when the screen eats sleep, movement and face-to-face time.

   A Large-Scale Test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis · 2017

   Not the number of hours, but what the screen displaces from the budget.

   The study measured over a hundred and twenty thousand British adolescents and found a curve, not a line: well-being rises slightly up to a point and falls after it. The estimated thresholds were of the order of two hours a day on school days for video games and somewhat more for watching — but the exact number matters less than the shape of the curve. The practical rule, by age. Under eighteen months: zero, apart from video calls. Eighteen months to five: under an hour a day, alongside an adult, slow content, no advertising. Six to ten: an hour on school days, two at the weekend, the screen in the shared room. Eleven to thirteen: negotiated as a weekly rather than a daily budget, still no screen in the bedroom. Fourteen and up: they manage their own time, you manage only two things — the screen leaves the bedroom at night and phones stay down at the table, for everyone. Three rules that matter more than the hour count. One, nothing in the hour before sleep. Two, nothing during meals. Three, human-chosen content beats algorithm-served content — a film you picked is a different thing from an infinite feed, even at the same duration.

   “The relation between screen time and well-being is not linear. Negative effects appear only past a threshold, and at moderate doses the association is slightly positive — hence the Goldilocks hypothesis.”

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