Is it safe for my baby to watch TV?

The verdict

No, and the guidance here is unusually consistent across countries.

The World Health Organization's guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under five state that for infants under one year of age, screen time is not recommended. For one-year-olds, sedentary screen time such as watching TV or videos or playing computer games is also not recommended. For two-year-olds, sedentary screen time should be no more than one hour, and less is better.

The American Academy of Pediatrics reaches the same place by a different route, recommending that media exposure be minimised or eliminated, other than video chatting, for children under 18 months.

Canada's 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years, published through CSEP, mirror the WHO structure. So the answer from the WHO, the AAP and Canadian national guidelines is the same, and it is zero.

The exception everyone makes

Video chatting is carved out by every body that publishes on this. A call with a grandparent is not passive media consumption: it is a two-way, contingent interaction with a real person who responds when the baby does something. That responsiveness is the ingredient that matters.

The carve-out is narrow. It covers live video calls with a person who is actually interacting. It does not cover recorded videos of family members, nor a call left running in the background.

Why the number is zero

The mechanism is not that screens are toxic. It is that time is finite and infant learning is relational.

The AAP's guidance on avoiding television for infants and toddlers notes that evidence suggests screen viewing before 18 months has lasting negative effects on children's language development, reading skills and short-term memory, and contributes to problems with sleep and attention. It also makes the practical point that supervised independent play - a baby with nesting cups on the floor while you cook - is more beneficial than screen media.

The displacement argument is the strongest one. Every minute a baby spends watching a screen is a minute not spent in the back-and-forth exchanges that build language: the caregiver naming a thing, the baby looking at it, the caregiver responding to the look. Screens do not do this, because they do not respond.

Background television counts

The AAP's work on noise and children observes that many children are exposed to background noise from televisions left on even when the child is not watching, and that when TVs are left on, babies and toddlers do not focus as much or as long on playing with toys.

There is a second effect on adults. A television on in the room reduces the quantity and quality of speech directed at the baby. Both halves of the interaction degrade.

This is the single most actionable thing on this page: turning the television off when nobody is actively watching it does more than policing tablet minutes.

What about educational programmes?

For a baby under 18 months, the evidence does not support the idea that any programme teaches them anything, however it is marketed. Infants under about 18 months struggle to transfer what they see on a two-dimensional screen to the three-dimensional world - a well-described phenomenon in developmental research.

The AAP's practical position, for families who do use media with young children, is to prefer programmes made with an understanding of child development and to watch alongside the child, talking about what is on screen. Co-viewing turns a screen into a shared object of attention, which is closer to how babies learn from anything else.

Being realistic about this

Guidance of zero collides with life. Screens exist, siblings watch things, and the twenty minutes it takes to cook dinner has to come from somewhere.

Some framings that hold up better than an absolute ban. Screens are not a sleep aid: WHO's guidelines sit inside a 24-hour framework where sleep and activity are traded against sedentary time, and Canada's guidelines specifically advise avoiding screen time before sleep and keeping screens out of the bedroom. Screens are not a feeding aid, because a baby watching a screen while eating is not learning to read their own fullness. And screens are not a substitute for the floor: the WHO recommendation for under-ones includes at least 30 minutes of tummy time spread through the day for babies not yet mobile.

Time in a seat is the other half of the guideline

The same WHO guidance sets a limit that is not about screens at all: an infant under one should not be restrained for more than one hour at a time, whether in a pram, a high chair or strapped to a carer's back. The same limit applies to one-year-olds and to three- and four-year-olds.

This is worth reading alongside the screen advice, because the underlying concern is the same: a young child who is passive, still and unengaged for long stretches is missing the thing that develops them.

Where guidance differs

There is remarkably little daylight between the major bodies here, which is unusual on this site.

The WHO sets the international baseline: no screen time under one, none at one, no more than one hour at two. Canada's 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years follow the same structure and add the sleep-hygiene point about screens before bed and screens in bedrooms. The AAP uses a slightly different boundary - minimise or eliminate media other than video chatting before 18 months - which is functionally the same advice with a different age marker.

The UK does not publish a national numerical screen time limit for under-fives in the way the WHO does. NHS advice instead frames it behaviourally, noting that watching TV or using a tablet for long periods, or being strapped into a buggy, car seat or highchair, is not good for young children, and pointing parents towards the physical activity guidelines for children under five.

Every one of them exempts live video calls with people who talk back.