Screen time, activity and sleep checker for under-5s

A guideline about play, not about screens

The WHO guideline on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for under-fives is usually reported as a screen-time rule. That is the least interesting thing in it. WHO's own expert put the point plainly when the guidance launched: "What we really need to do is bring back play for children."

Screens appear in the document because they are what movement is usually being lost to, not because screens are the target. Read that way, the whole thing becomes more useful and a great deal less guilt-inducing.

The four numbers, by age

Under 1: no screen time at all, active play several times a day, at least 30 minutes of tummy time spread through the day if not yet mobile, and 14 to 17 hours of sleep for the first three months, 12 to 16 hours from four to eleven.

One year old: still no recommended screen time, at least 180 minutes of activity at any intensity, and 11 to 14 hours of sleep.

Two years old: up to one hour of screen time, with "less is better" attached, 180 minutes of activity, 11 to 14 hours of sleep.

Three and four: up to one hour of screen time, 180 minutes of activity of which at least 60 minutes is proper running-about, and 10 to 13 hours of sleep.

And at every age under five: not strapped into a pram, high chair or carrier for more than an hour at a stretch.

The one everybody misses

The restraint limit is the sleeper recommendation in this guideline, and almost nobody has heard of it. It is not about a daily total; it is about the longest single stretch. An hour in the pram, twenty minutes running around a park, and then another hour is fine by this measure. Two and a half hours straight in a car seat and then a high chair is not.

It is also the one most easily fixed. A supermarket trip that ends with ten minutes of walking, rather than being lifted straight from trolley to car seat, meets it.

Reading a book is not the thing being limited

This matters enough that this calculator has a separate field for it. WHO says explicitly that quality sedentary time in interactive non-screen activities with a caregiver — reading, storytelling, singing, puzzles — is very important for child development.

So the guideline is not asking for less sitting. It is asking for less screen sitting, and it is actively asking for more of a different kind of sitting. A parent who reads three books at bedtime has not spent 20 sedentary minutes; they have done one of the most valuable things in the document.

Why sleep is in the same guideline

Because it competes for the same 24 hours. Time is conserved: an extra hour of screens in the evening comes out of sleep or out of play, and usually both. That is why WHO published these together rather than as three separate documents, and why this calculator adds up the day and shows you what is left.

The sleep figures are ranges, and children genuinely vary within them. Regular sleep and wake times are named in the guideline alongside the totals, and for many families they are the easier thing to change.

How not to use this

Not as a scorecard. These are population guidelines, built to shape services and public health advice, and a single day with more screen time than usual is a day rather than a pattern. If you are reading this at the end of a week when someone was ill, or you were, or the weather made the park impossible, the honest answer is that the guideline was not written about that week.

Video calls with grandparents are also not the thing being counted. The recommendation is about sedentary screen viewing, and an interactive call with a person who loves your child is closer to the storytelling category than the television one.

What the numbers do not capture

Two things sit outside the arithmetic and are worth holding on to. The first is that WHO's activity recommendation for babies is not really about minutes at all: several bursts of interactive floor-based play a day, with at least half an hour of tummy time spread through the waking day for a baby who is not yet mobile. Tummy time in three-minute pieces counts, and most babies protest at first.

The second is that from age one, the guideline says the activity should be spread through the day rather than done in one block, and adds "more is better" to almost every activity line. There is no upper limit on play. The only ceilings in the entire document are on screens and on being strapped in.

Where national guidance differs

The UK Chief Medical Officers publish their own early years physical activity guidance, and the American Academy of Pediatrics deliberately avoids a single hour figure in favour of a family media plan — agreeing where and when screens are used rather than counting minutes. Both are reasonable, and where your national guidance differs from WHO, follow it.

The AAP approach is worth knowing about even if you prefer the WHO numbers, because the questions it asks are practical ones: are screens allowed at meals, in bedrooms, in the hour before sleep. For most families those three decisions do more than any minute count.

This tool compares one day to a published table. It knows nothing else about your child, and if you have a concern about sleep, movement or development, your health visitor or GP is the right person to ask.