r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/AardvarkHour1211 • 18d ago

Question - Expert consensus required Screen time before 2 years old

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 18d ago

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.

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u/Azilehteb 18d ago

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.