Quick answer: national guidance in Singapore recommends no screens at all for children under eighteen months apart from video calls with family, and keeping screen use to under an hour a day outside school for children up to six, always with an adult alongside. Screens are also kept out of bedrooms and mealtimes. The reason is not that screens are evil. It is what they replace.

Guidance on this became much clearer in Singapore in recent years, and parents have reacted in two ways: relief at finally having a number, and quiet panic about how far from it their household is.

If you are in the second group, read the next section first.

Why the limits exist

The concern is not that a cartoon damages a brain. It is displacement.

A child under six is building language through back-and-forth conversation, building a body through movement, and building attention through absorbing themselves in something slow. Every hour of screen time is an hour that is not doing one of those, and at this age the hours are limited and the window matters.

There are three specific effects that show up consistently in research:

  • Less talk. A screen in a room reduces the amount of conversation between adult and child, even when nobody is watching it closely.
  • Worse sleep. Both the light and the stimulation delay settling, and screens near bedtime are one of the most reliable causes of a long bedtime.
  • Less movement. Time on a sofa is time not spent running, climbing and balancing.

Note what is not on the list: educational content is not the deciding factor. A well-made programme is better than a badly made one, but neither is close to a conversation with you.

What the guidance says, in short

  • Under 18 months: no screen use, other than video calls with family. Those are genuinely different, because they are interactive and involve a real person responding.
  • 18 months to about 6 years: less than an hour a day outside school hours, and ideally less, with an adult watching alongside.
  • Not in bedrooms. For any age of young child.
  • Not during meals. Family meals are prime conversation time and screens remove it.
  • Not as the main way of calming a child. A screen ends a tantrum quickly, and it also removes the practice a child needs at settling themselves.

Making it work in a real house

Now the honest part. Most families are over the line, and most families have very good reasons: a long commute, a sibling, a work call, a hot Sunday afternoon and no help.

Guilt does not change behaviour. Structure does.

  • Decide when, not how much. A predictable slot, such as after bath on certain days, causes far less conflict than a daily negotiation over minutes.
  • Watch together where you can. Talk about it, pause it, ask what might happen next. A watched-together show is a shared activity rather than a substitute for one.
  • End with a clear signal. Two-minute warnings, then the episode ends and the device goes away to a fixed place. The consistency does the work, not your firmness on any single day.
  • Have the alternative ready. Turning it off into an empty room causes trouble. Turning it off into a bath, a snack or a trip downstairs does not.
  • Protect the anchors first. Meals, bedtime, and the car if you can. If those three stay screen-free, the total looks after itself.
  • Keep your own use visible. Children notice. Saying "I am putting my phone away now" out loud is worth a great deal.
  • Choose slow content. Gentle, slow-paced programmes with a simple story are much easier for a young child to process than fast-cut, high-stimulation clips or an endless scroll of short videos.

What about video calls with grandparents?

Keep them. They are the exception for a good reason: an actual person responding in real time is a conversation, and for families with relatives overseas they matter enormously.

Where we stand

Shaws classrooms are screen-free. Not because we are against technology, but because we have four or five hours a day with your child and we would rather spend all of it on the things a screen cannot do: talking, building, digging, climbing, singing, arguing about whose turn it is and working it out.

Children will have a lifetime of screens, and they will learn the tools quickly when the time comes. They get one shot at the years where the brain is laying down language and attention.

If you want one change

Start with bedtime. Take screens out of the hour before sleep and out of the bedroom entirely. It is the single change that produces the fastest visible difference, usually within a week, and it improves everybody's evening including yours.

Shaws Preschool has run screen-free, play-based classrooms across the East Coast and Serangoon since 1989, with daily sport and outdoor learning. Come and see what fills the time instead: book a tour.