The term “Screen-time” has become a blunt instrument.
It’s used to describe everything from watching a film together on the sofa to endlessly scrolling short videos alone in bed. Educational apps and algorithmic feeds are collapsed into the same category. The internet itself is treated as a single, uniform experience that is either good or bad, healthy or harmful.
This isn’t quite true…
There’s a big difference between a child zoning out versus a child engaging deeply. Between passive consumption and active curiosity. Between time that drains energy and time that builds something.
The problem is that most conversations about screen time don’t leave much room for nuance.
The productive impasse
Not all screen time is created equal, but it’s often managed as if it is.
This distinction is increasingly reflected in paediatric guidance, which encourages families to focus less on time limits alone and more on what children are actually doing, with whom, and how it affects them.
Despite this, advice often swings between extremes. Either screens are treated as inherently damaging, or they’re defended wholesale as unavoidable. In both cases, the detail is lost.
Parents are left counting minutes instead of asking better questions:
-
What is my child actually doing?
-
How does this make them feel afterwards?
-
Is this expanding their world, or narrowing it?
Quality, not quantity, is where the real work is.
Why the internet gets blamed
Part of the confusion comes from how the internet is talked about.
Media coverage often conflates social media with the internet at large. Short-form video feeds, messaging apps, learning platforms, streaming services, games, and search engines are bundled together under one anxious label.
But the internet is not a single place. It’s a collection of tools, cultures, and behaviours. Some shallow, some rich, some fleeting, and some deeply formative.
Older parents often feel this intuitively. Many remember an earlier version of the internet with a strange mix of nostalgia and scepticism: message boards, forums, MSN, fan sites, Tumblr, weird corners stumbled upon accidentally.
That internet hasn’t disappeared.
It just needs to be approached differently now.
A spectrum, not a verdict
Rather than asking whether screen time is “good” or “bad”, it’s more useful to think of it as a spectrum.
Not something to be policed obsessively, but to be understood.
Low-quality screen time: idle scrolling
At one end sits passive, short-form scrolling.
This kind of screen time is easy to fall into and hard to leave. It’s designed to be frictionless, endless, and emotionally flat. It doesn’t require intention or effort, which is precisely why it can feel draining afterwards.
Research into how young people use digital media suggests that passive, algorithm-driven consumption is experienced very differently from social or creative use.
This doesn’t make short-form scrolling evil. Adults do it too. But it’s rarely nourishing, and it’s rarely memorable.
Parents tend to recognise this kind of screen time instinctively, even if they struggle to explain why it worries them.
Medium-quality screen time: play and participation
Move a little further along and things get more interesting.
Games like Roblox or Minecraft sit somewhere in the middle. They can involve creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving, yet they can also become repetitive and compulsive, depending on how they’re used.
This is where context matters.
Who is your child playing with? What are they building or doing? How do they feel when they stop?
Gaming isn’t automatically high or low quality. It shifts depending on intention, limits, and balance.
Educational research also highlights that interactive and goal-oriented digital activities can support learning and problem-solving, depending on how they’re used.
High-quality screen time: purpose and connection
Further along the spectrum, screen time starts to look very different.
-
Learning a language on Duolingo.
-
Video-calling grandparents.
-
Messaging friends on WhatsApp.
-
Watching a film together as a family, talking about it afterwards, rating it on Letterboxd and leaving a review.
These experiences tend to be bounded. They have a beginning and an end. They often connect to something beyond the screen, perhaps a relationship, a skill, or a shared reference.
Even social media can sit here, in the right conditions. Discovering cooking techniques, art styles, music, or niche interests can be genuinely enriching, especially when it leads to something done offline.
The screen becomes a doorway again.
What people really miss about the early internet
When people talk nostalgically about the early internet, they’re rarely missing the technology itself.
They’re missing the feel.
The sense that being online involved exploration rather than immersion. That you went looking for something, found it, and then left. That the internet was a tool you used, not an environment you lived inside.
Those qualities are still possible today. But they don’t emerge by accident.
They need structure.
Explore our blog post The Return of the Family Computer for more on this.
The problem with one-size-fits-all rules
This is where many screen-time rules fall down.
Blanket bans don’t distinguish between a child messaging a friend and a child scrolling aimlessly. Hard limits don’t account for days when screen time is social, creative, or shared. Surveillance tools flatten everything into data, stripping away context and conversation.
Parents end up managing behaviour rather than understanding it.
Children feel policed rather than supported.
Neither side wins.
The same lack of context appears in how many children first receive smartphones, often through hand-me-downs designed for adult use.
Reintroducing context
What’s missing from most screen-time debates is context.
Context turns “How long?” into “How was it?”
It turns enforcement into conversation.
It allows parents to respond differently to different kinds of digital life.
This is where Other Phone deliberately positions itself.
Rather than treating all screen time as equal, it allows families to shape the experience. Some activities can be encouraged. Others can be limited. Boundaries can be set around types of use, not just minutes on a clock.
Crucially, this doesn’t require constant monitoring.
Parents can set thoughtful guardrails once, then step back or adjust them once in a while, trusting them to hold while staying available for conversation.
From control to calibration
The goal isn’t to optimise every minute.
It’s to calibrate.
To help children recognise the difference between screen time that leaves them flat and screen time that leaves them curious, connected, or proud. To build that judgement gradually, with support.
That’s a skill, not a restriction.
And like any skill, it develops over time.
Shared culture still counts
Some of the highest-quality screen time doesn’t look educational at all.
Watching a series together. Quoting lines. Laughing at the same moments. Talking about characters and choices.
These experiences create shared cultural reference points — the digital equivalent of watching television together after dinner.
Child online safety organisations consistently emphasise that shared, discussed screen use is healthier than isolated consumption.
These experiences matter because they’re shared. Because they happen with other people. Because they invite reflection rather than isolation.
Screen time doesn’t become healthier by being solitary.
It becomes healthier by being contextual.
Letting go of the perfect answer
There is no universal ranking that works for every family, or every child.
What counts as high-quality screen time for one child may overwhelm another. Some children need more structure. Others need more freedom. Most need a mix, adjusted over time.
The mistake is thinking there’s a single correct number, app, or rule that solves the problem once and for all.
There isn’t.
What there is, instead, is an ongoing conversation.
Recreating the good bits
The best parts of the early internet — curiosity, creativity, connection, intentionality — are still within reach.
They just don’t come automatically anymore.
They need:
-
boundaries that make sense
-
tools that respect family priorities
-
and technology that knows when to step back
Other Phone isn’t about eliminating screen time or declaring winners and losers. It’s about making room for the kinds of digital experiences that add something, whilst gently limiting the ones that don’t.
Not because screens are bad.
But because childhood is worth more than an endless feed.
Living with the question
Is there such a thing as quality screen time?
The honest answer is that it depends.
On the child. On the moment. On the support around it.
What matters most is not getting it right all the time, but staying curious, paying attention, and being willing to adjust.
Quality screen time isn’t something you enforce.
It’s something you notice, nurture, and talk about together.
And in a world where screens are everywhere, that kind of attention may be the most valuable thing you can offer.
