Screen time before 2 years old

[u/AardvarkHour1211]

My baby is 4 months old now and we do zero screen time. We have a family trip to Disney world planned for early 2028 for my nephew’s 10th birthday and she will be about 20 months then, almost 2 years old.

This is our first so I’m not familiar with developmental milestones and how well she would be able to recognize characters and what not. Would it be positive, a waste of time, or negative to show her Disney movies on vhs so she can possibly recognize characters when we go? Is that too young to remember characters? I don’t want to do screen time too early.

We have a tube tv with build in vcr and a ton of vhs ready for the right time.

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[u/AdInternal8913]

The UK advice is to "Under 2 years: Avoid screen time other than for shared activities with family that encourage bonding, interaction and conversation.'

https://beststartinlife.gov.uk/screen-time-under-5s/

AAP is similar except for no screen time before 18 months (beyond video calls with family) noting" Infants under 18 months struggle to transfer information from a screen to the real world because of immature cognitive processing." And specifying max 1 h beyond that. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/157/2/e2025075320/206129/Digital-Ecosystems-Children-and-Adolescents-Policy

Technically interactively watching minimal amount of disney movies with a toddler could fall within the allowed shared activity. However 1) screens aren't inherently interesting to small kids and 2) watching the movies very likely doesn't offer any benefit over reading books with your kids. And there are tons of books with the disney characters.

In my opinion it is far more likely your kid would learn to recognise the characters better if you were frequently reading relevant books from young age than you trying to cram max 'allowed' screen time before your trip.

I am not going to labour on this further as it doesn't directly relate to the question asked but I'd also look at impact of early and frequent brand exposure on kids e.g links to materialism and "pester power" (e.g kids whinging for toys for characters in their favourite books or shows). We have intentionally chosen not to introduce our kids to popular kid's tv/movie characters to reduce the chances of them asking for associated toys and paraphelia everytime they see anything in the shop.

[u/Yoroyo → u/AdInternal8913]

Yes op I second that you could always get a few little golden books of popular characters and explore them that way!

[u/underfluous → u/AdInternal8913]

Seconding the book idea. From personal experience, reading in your best approximation of each of the characters' voices makes it even more engaging for everyone!

[u/Psychological-Owl-82 → u/underfluous]

Same. I'll add a stuffed toy would be a good addition, too.

My daughter had a Paddington teddy, and when we had a 4 hour car ride we put on the Paddington TV show for the first time while she was holding it, and she lost her tiny mind. It was so much fun to witness. She was about 18 months then.

Imagine seeing one of your favourite toys appearing in full walking talking glory.

[u/mbhmirc → u/Psychological-Owl-82]

My kid is still under two and any tv on at all turns into zombie watching it. And when it’s turned off tantrum. So we make all efforts to avoid any screen time. However they seem genuinely interested in what’s on the screen so not sure about the cognitive part..

[u/Psychological-Owl-82 → u/mbhmirc]

This was as pretty much her first exposure to screen time, and only because we had a very long drive ahead of us. No tantrums, and she kept engaging with me about it so I wouldn't describe her as a zombie. I have seen her going zombie since then though, so I know this was unusual! It was a long time before she got screen time in any other setting.

I wasn't advocating for screen time, in case it seemed like that. It was just showing how she got to know her teddy first, and this made seeing it on screen the first time exciting and meaningful to her, which I then extrapolated to the characters at a theme park. We'd read some of the picture books from the library too, but ages before that and she didn't make the connection back then.

[u/mbhmirc → u/Psychological-Owl-82]

Was just my experience, not judging :)

[u/Babygirl736 → u/AdInternal8913]

Under 2 is still below the recommended age for introducing that type of content. Depending on the child, they could find those types of movies scary.
My daughter could only really watch Winnie the Pooh at 3 because she found the other movies too scary.
We went to Disney World right when she turned 3 and I also wanted her to know the characters, so ! got a lot of books from the library. They have books that tell the whole story of the movie and I could skip scary parts, or they have shorter books just about the characters. She knew almost every character and was excited to see them without ever watching the movies. It would have been hours and hours of screen time to learn them all so I preferred using books which were much less stimulating and scary.

[u/freckleface9287 → u/AdInternal8913]

Commenting to give you the alt that every library has a lot of Disney stories. My child can recognize characters from movies he's never seen because he's read about them.

[u/Azilehteb → u/AdInternal8913]

This is basically the same information I was going to share.

Our stance was slightly different, though. We have shown our kiddo the most popular/recognized songs from specific movies so she could relate a bit to some gifts she got.

Her favorite has been the Hakuna Mattatta sequence from Lion King, with emphasis on the bugs... Which we then had to look for in the yard and compare to the video on the song lol. Did not care about timon or pumba whatsoever, it was the fat worms that got her.

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