Pre-school children use screens for four hours a day

CHILDREN as young as three spend more than four hours a day in front of a screen, an Ofcom study found.

Three and four-year-olds are online for an average of 71 minutes per day, or eight hours, 18 minutes a week – an hour and a half more than a year ago.

Daily screen time for children under five rises to more than four hours when video games and watching television are included. The research found that one in three pre-school age children own their own media device, such as a tablet or games console.

Overall, children spend more time online than watching television. The tipping point between modern and traditional forms of “screen time” has been reached, with five to 15-year-olds spending 15 hours a week online compared with 13 and a half hours watching television. The figure represents a 9.5 per cent jump in online consumption from last year, when the age group averaged 13 hours, 42 minutes a week.

A leading child psychologist called for a “screen time” limit for under-fives of an hour a day due to “multiple developmental and health concerns”.

But parents admitted they were less concerned about time spent in front of the television than other media, as they increasingly consider it an important part of family life, the report said.

Less than a quarter of 1,362 parents asked said they were concerned about time spent in front of the television, while 35 per cent complained about internet use. “Parents [are] more concerned with managing the smartphone, tablet or, for boys in particular, the games console,” the report said.

Dr Hayley van Zwanenberg, of the Priory’s Wellbeing Clinics, said screen time was like “a digital drug” for young children, who should instead be “active, investigating life in the real world”.