Is screen time okay during story time?

Screen time for toddlers and pre-K kids gets a bad rap. That might be deserved—there's suggestive evidence linking it to issues with sleep and cognitive development. But research on e-books suggests screens themselves aren't necessarily an issue for learning.

All else equal, young kids can learn just as much from e-books as from print books. While babies and young toddlers might have slightly more trouble generalizing content from touchscreens, by the age of two kids can pick up concepts from e-books or print and apply them across contexts.

The issue is that parents don't treat e-books and print books equally. In experiments parents tend to talk more about the book's format (e.g., "swipe to turn the page") and less about the book's concepts (e.g., "what do you think about this?") when they read from a tablet. That corresponds with fewer content-related comments from their kids and weaker comprehension.

The problem goes away when parents aren't responsible for reading the e-book. For instance, kids learned new vocabulary effectively from e-books in pre-K and kindergarten classrooms. And when parents and toddlers listened to a narrated e-book together, the toddlers were more attentive, listened longer and learned more than when their parent read the paper version.

So feel free to have digital story time, but try to focus on the story itself and ask plenty of questions.