A free, single-purpose tool that checks your child's screen use against published guidance from the AAP, WHO and NHS - and is honest about where that guidance is firm and where it is not.
Screen time is a topic where confident advice outstrips the evidence. Our aim is narrower and more useful than "screens are bad": show you the actual published recommendation for your child's age, show how your household compares, and be clear about what the research does and does not support.
Parents asking "how much screen time is okay?" get a mix of a decade-old "two hour rule", alarming headlines, and the honest-but-unsatisfying answer that it depends. The underlying guidance is actually fairly clear for young children and deliberately flexible for older ones, but you have to read several documents to piece that together.
Kids Screen Time Calculator does that work. Enter your child's age and their typical daily recreational screen hours, and it shows the published recommendation for that age - the firm AAP and WHO limits for under-5s, and the AAP's "consistent family-agreed limits" approach for school-age children and teens - and where your household sits relative to it. It runs entirely in your browser; nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored.
Kids Screen Time Calculator is an independent website run by its founder together with a small editorial team of writers and editors who research parenting and child-development topics. We are not paediatricians, psychologists or a medical service, and we have no affiliation with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, or the NHS.
We do not add our own opinions to the guidance. Where the research is genuinely unsettled - the link between screens and attention problems, "dopamine" explanations, the effect of a single hour limit for older children - we say so rather than picking a side. Our full process is in our editorial standards.
The calculator's age bands and limits come from a small number of named, publicly available sources:
AAP Council on Communications and Media, in Pediatrics. Our source for children under 5: video chat under 18 months, co-viewed high-quality content at 18-24 months, up to 1 hour/day of quality content ages 2-5.
AAP Council on Communications and Media, in Pediatrics. Our source for ages 6+, which replaces a fixed cap with consistent, family-agreed limits that protect sleep and activity.
No sedentary screen time under 1 year; no more than 1 hour ages 2-4. Independently corroborates the AAP's early-years figures.
UK guidance recommending individualised limits that prioritise sleep, activity, homework and face-to-face time over a fixed number. nhs.uk
→ Full citations and how each figure maps to the calculator · → Printable age chart
We review the calculator's figures and every article on this site at least every six months, and out of cycle whenever the AAP, WHO or NHS announce a revision. If official recommendations change, we update the figures, the guides and the "last reviewed" dates, and note what changed.
If you spot an error, email hello@kidsscreentimecalculator.com with the page and, if you have one, the source. We investigate every report. Our editorial standards page has the full review schedule, corrections policy, and a note on how the site is funded (display advertising only - no sponsored content, no affiliate links).
The calculator runs entirely in your browser. The age and screen-time hours you enter are never sent to a server, stored, or shared. No account is needed. The site shows advertising through Google AdSense, which may set cookies - full detail is in the Privacy Policy. This site is for parents and caregivers, not for use by children, and is operated in line with COPPA.
Disclaimer: Kids Screen Time Calculator provides general information based on published population-level guidance. It is not a medical or psychological service and does not provide advice about an individual child. Results are a starting point for family conversations, not a clinical recommendation. If you have concerns about your child's development, attention, sleep or wellbeing, consult your doctor, health visitor or a paediatrician.
Kids Screen Time