Should children be allowed unlimited screen time? If not, what limits should we impose?

This is a fairly common question that parents have to reckon with these days. What I find missing in these discussions is that not all screen time is created equal.

In my mind, there are two main kinds of screen time. On the one hand, there is the harmful kind. It’s the passive, mind-numbing, and unprofitable waste of time where we allow children to watch TV shows, play games, and scroll on social media. On the other hand, there is a good kind of screen time. It’s when children learn to use computers, when they learn programming, photo editing, vector graphics design, 3D modeling, music production, when they communicate with family who live far away, etc.

In our household, we allow our children some time to watch TV, and to play video games; but, we encourage the profitable kind of screen time, and place almost no time limits on it.