Editorial Standards & Review Process

👥 Who produces this site

Kids Screen Time Calculator is an independent website maintained by its founder and a small editorial team of writers and editors who research parenting and child-development topics. We build free, single-purpose tools for parents and write supporting guides around them.

What we are not: we are not paediatricians, psychologists, or a medical service, and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or funded by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, or the NHS. We reference their publicly available guidance; we do not speak for them.

Screen time research is genuinely mixed on many points - screen time matters less than what is displaced (sleep, activity, face-to-face time) and the content and context of use. Where the evidence is unsettled, we say so rather than presenting a single number as settled fact.

📚 Where our numbers come from

Every age band and time limit used by the calculator and the articles traces back to one of these published sources:

• AAP Council on Communications and Media. "Media and Young Minds." Pediatrics, 2016 - our primary source for children under 5 (video chat under 18 months; high-quality co-viewed content from 18-24 months; up to 1 hour/day of quality content ages 2-5).
• AAP Council on Communications and Media. "Media Use in School-Aged Children and Adolescents." Pediatrics, 2016 - our source for ages 6+, which moves away from a single hour cap toward consistent family-agreed limits that protect sleep and activity.
• WHO. "Guidelines on Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour and Sleep for Children Under 5 Years of Age." 2019 - independently corroborates the AAP's early-years figures (no sedentary screen time under 1; no more than 1 hour ages 2-4).
• NHS guidance for families on screen use - recommends individualised limits that prioritise sleep, activity, homework and face-to-face time over a fixed numeric cap.

Our full citation list, including how each figure maps onto the calculator's age bands, is on the Sources & Research page.

✍️ How articles are written and checked

Every guide on this site goes through the same steps:

• Research first. We start from the primary sources above plus recognised child-development bodies and peer-reviewed reviews, not from other blogs.
• Draft against the source. Any specific claim - an hour figure, an age range, a research finding - is written with the source open and is only included if the source supports it.
• Editorial review. A second person checks every factual claim against its citation, flags anything stated more strongly than the evidence supports, and cuts filler.
• Plain-language pass. We rewrite for a parent reading on a phone, not for a search engine.
• Publish with dates. Each article shows a publish date and a "last reviewed" date so you can judge how current it is.

We do not publish AI-generated articles at volume, thin listicle filler, or near-duplicate pages spun from one template. If a topic does not warrant a genuinely useful, specific article, we do not publish one.

🔄 Our review schedule

Screen time guidance evolves as new research lands and as children's device use changes. So:

• The calculator's data and every guide are reviewed at least once every six months.
• We check for new or revised statements from the AAP, WHO and NHS at every review, and out of cycle if a major revision is announced.
• If official recommendations change, we update the calculator's figures and all affected pages, and note the change on this page and in the affected article.
• The "last reviewed" date on each page reflects the most recent time a human checked that page against current guidance - not just the last typo fix.

🛠️ Corrections policy

If you spot something on this site that looks wrong, out of date, or unclear, please tell us. Email hello@kidsscreentimecalculator.com with the page, the claim, and the source you are referencing if you have one.

• We investigate every correction report.
• Clear factual errors are fixed as quickly as we can confirm them, usually within a few days.
• When we change something substantive, we update the "last reviewed" date and, for significant corrections, add a short note explaining what changed.

💰 How this site is funded

Kids Screen Time Calculator is free to use and is funded entirely by display advertising served through Google AdSense.

• We do not sell sponsored posts, paid placements, or "reviews".
• Advertisers have no input into our content, our figures, or what we recommend. Ad slots are filled automatically by Google and are kept separate from editorial content.
• We do not use affiliate links in our guides. If that ever changes, we will disclose it clearly on the relevant page.
• The calculator runs entirely in your browser. We never collect, store, or sell the age or screen-time hours you enter - see our Privacy Policy.