Research shows that 67 per cent of children have access to a tablet at home, and parents often rely on them to soothe or occupy their kids.DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
Kaitlyn Regehr is an associate professor and the program director of Digital Humanities at University College London, and the author of Smartphone Nation: Why We’re All Addicted to Our Screens and What You and Your Family Can Do About It.
As summer winds down, many of us parents find ourselves taking stock. Did our kids get enough fresh air? Did they move, explore and create memories beyond their screens? We often measure our efforts against hazy recollections of our own childhood summers – days that stretched long, filled with scraped knees, bikes left in a neighbour’s driveway, and the freedom to roam until the street lamps flickered on. Popularized in films like Stand By Me, these “golden summers” have become an iconic reference point for nostalgia, even if they belonged more to Hollywood than reality.
But in 2025, this vision is not only outdated – it can be unhelpful. Today’s kids don’t grow up in sprawling neighbourhoods where everyone knows each other’s names, and the space where many coming-of-age experiences unfold is no longer the cul-de-sac, but the digital landscape. Screens are woven into daily life, and increasingly toxic social-media spaces shape how children spend their time. That means the choices we face as parents today are far more complex.
For years, the advice offered to parents centred around “screen time” – the idea that if we simply limited consumption to one or two hours a day, our kids might replicate the carefree summers of our past. But this guidance is outdated.
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It stems from studies linking screen use to higher body mass index, which focused predominantly on physical health. This was helpful guidance for physical well-being. What it often overlooked was content – what kids were actually watching – and how that might affect their mental well-being.
Screen-time limits address only quantity, not quality. That distinction matters. Age-appropriate, regulated programming on television can look very different from unregulated private screen use on a tablet, where even the most minimal restrictions are often absent. On a personal device, children can slip from one platform to another, with algorithms shaping what they see, often away from parental oversight.
Recognizing this, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its guidance in 2016, urging parents to think less about rigid limits and more about behaviours: making screen use interactive, social and educational. When parents co-view and choose programs with intention, screen time can become healthier, more creative and even a source of connection.
Tablets in particular have become the dominant device of childhood. A Pew Research Center survey showed that 67 per cent of children have access to one at home, and parents often rely on them to soothe or occupy their kids. Nearly 90 per cent of parents of children aged 5 to 11 say their child watches YouTube – yet many don’t consider YouTube to be social media, even though it’s also algorithm-driven and filled with the same content as TikTok or Instagram.
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Regardless of device or platform, the point is that families should approach screen use as an active, conscious choice. Like nutrition, healthy consumption is built through habits seeded early. Watching a curated family show together is not the same as a child scrolling alone through endless feeds in their bedroom.
This isn’t to romanticize an earlier era of parenting. Many of us were also placed in front of television sets while our parents cooked dinner, but their choices were limited to a handful of regulated programs. Today’s parents confront a completely different media environment – one with vastly more content, less regulation and greater risks.
So before we get lost chasing a Hollywood-glamourized past of dusk-lit bike rides, we’d do better to widen our perspective. Screens are not going away, and what matters is how we guide our children to use them: critically, thoughtfully and with balance. As we reflect on the summer that has just passed, it’s worth first broadening our view around what screens are and what screen time is. And as we reflect, perhaps we can seek to make new screen resolutions for the school year ahead – because it’s worth being more conscious about what we are doing and how we are doing it.
