Screen time for 4-year-olds
At 4, official guidance is 1 hour a day of high-quality programs, watched together. The sources, sleep and activity needs, and house rules that work.
What official guidance says
- World Health Organization, guidelines for children under 5 (2019): sedentary screen time of no more than 1 hour a day for 2 to 4-year-olds; less is better.
- American Academy of Pediatrics, Media and Young Minds (2016): for 2 to 5-year-olds, limit screen use to 1 hour a day of high-quality programs, and watch with them to help them understand what they see.
- American Academy of Pediatrics: designate media-free times together, such as dinner or driving, and media-free locations at home, such as bedrooms; the AAP offers a free Family Media Plan to write the family rules down.
Sleep and activity at 4
- Sleep
- 10-13 hours a day, including naps
- Asleep by, for a 7am wake-up
- 8:30pm
- Screens off by (an hour before)
- 7:30pm
- Activity
- at least 180 minutes a day of physical activity, including at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous play
Sleep: American Academy of Sleep Medicine consensus, endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (2016). Activity: World Health Organization (2019).
House rules that work at this age
- Watch together and talk about what you see
- Choose the show before the screen goes on, and decide how many episodes
- No screens at meals or in the bedroom
- A timer they can see, with a five-minute warning
- Screens off at least an hour before bed
TaskFamily's suggestions, not official guidance.
TaskFamily helps you keep screen rules without the fight: extra screen time as a reward children earn in your own shop, focus timers, a routine step for "devices on the charger" and chat quiet hours.
Free for one household. Premium is $5.99 a month or $49 a year for the whole family, never per child.
Keep reading
Guidance is quoted only from the named official sources; the school-day hours are our arithmetic from the stated assumptions. The guide text is drafted with AI from these numbers and checked automatically before it is published.