*Originally published in Estadão.

*This is an AI-powered machine translation of the original text in Portuguese

Concern about “excessive screen time” is a key issue in the debate over parental supervision of children and adolescents in the digital environment. The term was incorporated into Law No. 15,211/2025, the Digital Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA Digital), but it may encourage an overly simplistic interpretation: how many hours are too many?

The question is poorly framed because screen time should not be analyzed through absolute temporal metrics, but rather in light of the comprehensive protection of children and adolescents.

Two hours of screen time may involve studying, video calls with family members, creative expression, or use accompanied by adults; but it may also involve passive consumption, nighttime use, use during meals, or solitary use. Time alone says very little. To assess risk, it is necessary to consider age, psychological and emotional development, progressive autonomy, time of day, type of activity, content, adult supervision, and effects on sleep, nutrition, education, social interaction, and physical activity. Family rules focused on balance, supervision, and communication tend to produce better outcomes.

This observation shifts the legal focus toward patterns of use that displace activities essential to development or exploit minors’ vulnerabilities. When the regulatory debate reduces everything to the accumulation of minutes, the benchmark may be both excessive, by restricting educational, communicative, and socially valuable uses, and insufficient, by leaving untouched risk factors associated with harm, such as nighttime use, persuasive design, lack of adult mediation, and dependence on algorithmic validation.

The most recent guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics moves away from the idea of a universal screen-time cap and recommends focusing on the quality of digital interaction rather than merely its duration. Consistent with the best interests of the child, “excessive screen time” cannot function as a self-sufficient criterion for distinguishing between benign, ambiguous, and harmful uses.

This shift directly affects parental duties. Parents’ responsibilities are not limited to keeping track of time. They include organizing the context of use: protecting sleep, meals, study, and family interaction; avoiding devices in bedrooms at night; establishing screen-free spaces; and distinguishing recreational use from educational use. They also include prioritizing high-quality content, creative or educational activities, and, for younger children, supervised engagement. More than surveillance, this requires active mediation, observing signs of harm such as irritability, isolation, declining performance, conflicts, worsening sleep, or distress when use is interrupted, and calibrating intervention according to the minor’s progressive autonomy.

Although the family is the core of comprehensive protection, digital providers play an enabling role by supplying, as the Constitution states, “the means for families to protect themselves.” The Digital ECA, regulated by Decree No. 12,880/2026, imposes on providers of services likely to be accessed by children and adolescents the duty to offer accessible parental-supervision tools, usage-time visibility, and limits on features that artificially increase or prolong time spent on the service. Timers and reports matter, but they are only part of the solution. Effective tools should distinguish study and healthy leisure from passive consumption and signs of compulsive behavior.

There are concrete examples. In video and social media platforms, TikTok allows daily limits and Scheduled Breaks; users under 18 have a default daily limit, and those under 16 receive nighttime prompts after 10 p.m. YouTube allows Shorts to be limited, including to zero, in addition to break reminders and bedtime reminders. Instagram’s Teen Accounts adopt sleep mode between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. and daily reminders, together with parental supervision. These tools address not only time, but also context of use and retention mechanisms.

In operating systems, Apple Screen Time, Family Sharing, and Google Family Link combine app-specific limits, exception requests, content restrictions, downtime, school time, device locking, Ask to Buy, “bonus time,” and exceptions for necessary applications. These tools do not merely measure total time; they separate contexts and allow governance of different forms of use.

In gaming and immersive environments, Microsoft Family Safety, PlayStation, Nintendo, Roblox, and Amazon Kids offer different combinations of limits by device, game, or application, daily schedules, additional time allowances, activity reports, spending restrictions, content-maturity indicators, and educational functions such as Learn First. Rather than treating all digital use as a homogeneous block, these solutions differentiate entertainment, learning, purchasing, social interaction, and access times.

The relevant regulatory question, therefore, is not whether children and adolescents should use screens “a lot” or “a little,” but under what conditions such use becomes compatible with healthy development, progressive autonomy, and effective protection. Fundamentally, the issue is about the quality of use rather than time itself.