Screen time for kids by age: what Indian paediatricians recommend

Most parents asking this question are asking for a number, and for the youngest children there is one. For everyone older the IAP gives a test instead, which is more useful than it sounds: it tells you what to protect, not how many minutes to count.

The guideline, age by age

For comparison, a 2025 review of Indian studies found that under-five children in India average about 2.2 hours of screen time a day — roughly double the upper limit for ages 2 to 5, and well past the zero recommended under 2. If your child is above the guideline, you are in the majority, not the exception. The useful question is which hours to take back first.

Why no number after age 5?

Because what a screen is used for starts to matter as much as how long. The IAP counts schoolwork, talking to friends and relatives, and making art or music as healthy screen time, and unsuitable shows, unsafe websites and violent games as unhealthy. A strict hour would treat a video call with a grandparent and an hour of short video as the same thing.

So the IAP's test is displacement. If screen use is eating into sleep, physical play, study, meals, hobbies or family time, it is excessive and should come down — whatever the total is. It is a better rule than a number for a practical reason too: it is the thing you can actually see happening at home.

The rules that matter more than the total

• Screens off an hour before bedtime. The IAP asks for this explicitly, and it is where screen time does the most damage to children of every age.
• Device-free zones: the IAP lists the bedroom, the dining table, the kitchen, the bathroom and the car. Rooms are easier to enforce than minutes.
• A daily time when nobody in the family uses a device — the IAP calls it a “digital fasting time” — used for time together.
• Do not use a screen to calm or distract a child. It works, which is exactly why it becomes a habit.
• Watch with younger children, and talk about what you are watching.
• No devices during offline homework, so homework is not a multitasking session.
• Model it. The IAP is blunt that your own screen time affects your child, and a rule the adults break is a rule the children will argue with.

How to set limits on the phone itself

For a child's own phone or tablet, the right tool is the one built into the platform, because you hold the passcode. On iPhone and iPad, Screen Time through Family Sharing lets you set Downtime and app limits from your own phone. On Android, Google's Family Link lets you set daily limits, block apps and set a bedtime from the parent's phone. Both are free.

Spark is not parental control, and we would rather say so here than after you have bought one. Whoever holds the key can unlock the phone, there is no remote lock and no parent view, and a Spark belongs to one account. It helps in a household in two ways: a teenager who wants to study without their phone winning, and agrees where their own key lives, and parents who want to lock their own phones at dinner and after nine. For a young child, use the platform's controls.