Every parent has googled this at some point, usually at 9pm, usually after a day when the tablet did more babysitting than planned. So here is the straight answer first.
The World Health Organization recommends no more than one hour of sedentary screen time a day for children aged 3 to 4, and says less is better. The American Academy of Pediatrics lands in a similar place for ages 2 to 5: about an hour a day of high-quality content, watched together when you can.
The number is the small half of the advice
Read those guidelines closely and you notice something. Both spend less ink on the hour and more on what the hour replaces. The real worry is not the screen. It is the sleep, the play, the running, and above all the talking that the screen quietly eats.
An hour of cartoons in a day full of conversation is a different thing from an hour of cartoons in a day of silence. The guideline is a fence. The field inside it is language.
What to do at 6pm
Knowing the number does not cook dinner. A few things that work in real houses: pick the screen window in advance and let your child know when it ends. Put something after it that they like, so the end is a beginning. And when you can, sit with them for a few minutes of it. A cartoon you talk about together is closer to a conversation than to a screen.
If the evening still collapses without a screen, you do not need more discipline. You need a better alternative. Something that answers back.
That is the gap we are building Lumi for: a screen-free friend that talks, in the languages you speak at home. But screen or no screen, the hour is yours to place. The talking is the part that cannot be skipped.
