Retrospective digest / 100 digests
Studies, guidelines, laws and platform changes that shape what families are told about screens, each read for what it shows and what it leaves open.
Historical event dates and source dates are separate from the preparation date of this local edition. Every digest is a retrospective draft prepared 16 September 2026; none was published on its historical date.
100 digests
A pretest-posttest evaluation of Sesame Street's first season found the largest gains among children who watched most, including disadvantaged children.
A verbatim transcript shows Fred Rogers securing Senate support for public broadcasting by describing a programme's purpose, not its ratings.
Bandura's Bobo doll experiments showed young children readily imitate a specific aggressive act they have watched under laboratory conditions.
The Surgeon General's 1972 report on TV violence reached a cautious, qualified conclusion and openly described industry influence over its own membership.
The Children's Television Act of 1990 caps advertising minutes in children's programming and ties broadcast licence renewal to an educational-service review.
A 2005 review found toddlers consistently learn less from video than from an equivalent live demonstration, known as the video deficit effect.
A 2007 survey found infant DVD and video viewing associated with a smaller vocabulary, a correlation the authors said needed further explanation.
A 2010 national survey distinguished media use from media exposure, showing multitasking nearly closes a three-hour gap between the two figures.
Two studies found adult background television, barely watched by toddlers, still shortened their play and reduced parent-child interaction.
The AAP's 1999 media education statement balanced media's risks and benefits, a framing its 2016 statement on young children later revised.
Two AAP statements replaced a single screen-age rule with age-banded guidance and a family media plan, naming their own evidence gaps.
AAP's Family Media Plan turns a 2016 call for individualised guidance into a worksheet a family completes rather than a fixed limit.
WHO's 2019 guideline set hour limits on sedentary screen time for under-fives and rated the evidence behind them very low quality.
The UK's four chief medical officers said the evidence could not support a screen-time number and gave process advice instead.
RCPCH's 2019 guide said no evidence supported a screen-time threshold and offered four questions for families to ask instead.
Canada's movement guidelines cap recreational screen time inside a single day that also sets targets for sleep and activity.
Australia's guideline developers reviewed the evidence themselves, then formally adopted Canada's two-hour screen limit nearly word for word.
AAP's Center of Excellence turns social media research into tip sheets and a five-part framework rather than a single verdict on harm.
The Surgeon General said social media's safety for children is not yet established and asked five groups to act on that uncertainty.
APA based ten adolescent social media recommendations on evidence it says cannot yet show cause and effect for most claimed harms.
A specification-curve analysis of 355,358 adolescents found technology use explained at most 0.4% of wellbeing variation.
Twenge and colleagues linked rising US teen depression to rising new-media use; the effect size is contested.
Odgers and Jensen's 2020 review found mostly correlational evidence and only minor associations in the largest studies.
An ABCD Study analysis of 11,875 9- and 10-year-olds found screen time explained less variance than family socioeconomic status.
A 42-study meta-analysis linked more screen time to weaker child language skills, but co-viewing and educational content to stronger skills.
A meta-analysis of 125,198 children found bedtime device access, not only use, was associated with poorer sleep.
A 2021 meta-analysis found smart device use associated with myopia odds, while eye bodies point separately to outdoor time.
A two-year cohort of 2,587 teens found high-frequency digital media use associated with higher odds of new ADHD symptoms.
An observational study of 37 pairs found less parent-toddler dialogue and collaboration with electronic books than print.
A 2015 review proposed active, meaningful, social and focused features to judge whether an educational app actually teaches.
The Anxious Generation argues phones drove a mental-health crisis; a Nature review says the evidence shows correlation, not proof of cause.
Pew's 2023 teen survey measured platform use and near-constant time online, and its 2024 wave shows how much one year moves the numbers.
Common Sense's tween and teen census found media use grew more from 2019 to 2021 than in the previous four years combined.
Ofcom's 2024 survey found 51% of under-13s report using social media despite the usual 13-plus minimum age on most platforms.
The WHO's ICD-11 gaming disorder diagnosis requires a year of significant impairment, and says it does not describe ordinary heavy play.
The UK government found an association between loot boxes and problem gambling but backed industry measures instead of new legislation.
Meta published its account of internal teen research after press reporting, then a Senate subcommittee questioned its safety head about it.
Pew's 2022 survey found 46% of teens experienced at least one named type of online harassment, most often name-calling.
A study using game companies' own telemetry, not self-reports, found play time weakly and positively related to wellbeing.
A 2021 study of the ABCD cohort found adolescent recreational screen time rose from about 3.8 to 7.7 hours a day early in the pandemic.
The FTC's children's privacy rule dates to 2000 and was tightened again in January 2025.
A 2019 settlement required YouTube to label child-directed content and stop targeted ads on it.
A 2022 settlement targeted Fortnite's default chat settings and a purchase flow that led to unwanted charges.
Musical.ly settled a children's privacy case in 2019; TikTok faces a separate, unresolved federal complaint from 2024.
The Kids Online Safety Act passed the Senate 91-3 in 2024 but was not enacted; it is now reintroduced.
A federal appeals court upheld an injunction on one provision and sent the rest of the law back for review.
A 2023 Florida law bars phone use during instructional time and requires blocking social media on school networks.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act criminalises nonconsensual intimate images, real or faked, and sets a 48-hour removal duty.
Utah's 2023 social media law for minors was replaced in 2024, and enforcement is now paused by a court.
A 2024 FTC staff report found scant extra protection for teens, and reliance on 'no child users' claims.
The Children's Code set fifteen design standards for services likely to be used by children, in force since 2020.
The Online Safety Act's child safety duties were phased in through 2025 under codes a regulator enforces.
Providers, not parents, must take reasonable steps to keep under-16s off covered platforms, with a phased start.
The Commission's 2025 guidelines interpret an existing DSA duty and are voluntary, not new binding law.
A 2018 statute bars phones in nursery, primary and lower-secondary schools, with detail left to each school.
UNESCO's 2023 monitoring report urges technology use only where evidence shows it helps learning.
2024 non-statutory advice on school phone bans has since been revised into a statutory requirement.
A 2024 public health recommendation advises no screens under two and rising hourly limits by age.
General comment No. 25 sets out states' duties on privacy, protection, information and play in digital life.
Europe's pan-national game rating system, launched in 2003, labels age suitability through content descriptors.
Apple's iOS 12 announcement and current support pages describe what Screen Time reports and restricts, and what a parent cannot remove.
Google's help documentation sets Family Link's under-13 threshold and ties the end of supervision to each country's own digital consent age.
YouTube's 2015 launch post and current help documentation describe a filtered app that its own text admits cannot guarantee every video.
Meta's 2024 announcement sets private, restricted defaults for teens under 18 and admits its own age-detection tools are still imperfect.
TikTok's announcements describe a daily prompt teens can bypass with a passcode, and a separate, parent-managed Family Pairing limit.
Roblox's own documentation ties remote parental controls and chat access to an age band that can be set by facial age estimation.
ESRB's own documentation separates content ratings from Interactive Elements, which flag purchases, user content and connectivity.
Nintendo's own parental controls documentation says a parent can see who a child played and chatted with, not what was said.
Meta's 2017 launch announcement and current site describe Messenger Kids as controlling a child's contact list, not their conversations.
Snap's own documentation says Family Center shows a teen's contacts, time and location to a parent, deliberately without messages.
A 2015 OECD report on PISA data found heavy ICT investment did not track with better reading, maths or science results.
PISA 2022 found students reporting frequent device distraction in maths lessons scored lower, an association rather than proof of cause.
A randomised evaluation of Peru's laptop programme found no effect on maths or language despite far higher computer use.
Across 54 studies, comprehension was better on paper than screen, especially under time pressure and for factual text.
The 2014 longhand-over-laptop finding was large; a 2019 replication found no consistent difference between groups.
A natural experiment using 1969 broadcast signal quality found the show improved school performance, mainly for boys.
The What Works Clearinghouse grades education studies by design quality, and many popular tools have none that qualify.
Blocked in January 2023, ChatGPT was unblocked in May after the chancellor called the initial caution a missed opportunity.
A difference-in-differences study found scores rose after bans, with the largest gains for low-achieving students.
A field experiment found unrestricted GPT-4 access boosted practice performance but harmed later exam results without it.
A 715-parent survey found each added hour of touchscreen use was associated with a net loss of toddler sleep.
A 2017 legal analysis frames sharenting as a real tension between a parent's expression and a child's privacy.
A six-month study found parents' device interruptions and child behaviour problems predicted each other over time.
An observational study of 55 fast-food meals found caregiver phone absorption tracked with harsher responses to misbehaviour.
A 2011 report defines joint media engagement and traces why shared use, not mere supervision, supports learning.
A Calgary cohort of 2,441 children found screen time predicted later developmental scores, and not the reverse.
Home audio recordings of 220 Australian families found screen time associated with less parent-child talk.
The FTC's September 2025 orders seek details on how companion chatbots affect children and teens.
YouTube's November 2017 update expanded age-restriction, ad removal and comment controls on family content.
An automated scan of 5,855 children's apps found most likely breaching US child privacy rules via ad SDKs.
Common Sense Media's own pages describe reviewer-written, category-based ratings from a nonprofit that says funders have no influence.
Internet Matters' pages describe age-by-age guides and named corporate collaborations, without a full funder list on those pages.
A 2016 sleep-medicine panel set recommended nightly hours by age using a formal consensus method, not a study of screens themselves.
5Rights Foundation's Pathways report used avatar accounts and designer interviews to document design features and speed of harm exposure.
The ICO's own guidance names several age-check methods and says the one used should match risk, not follow one mandated standard.
The pledge only activates once ten families in a grade join, and its evidence page cites outside studies it does not itself verify.
Smartphone Free Childhood states it began as a parent WhatsApp group in February 2024 and asks for a pledge, not a research citation.
The AAP's 2014 statement asks pediatricians to promote reading aloud from infancy at every visit, citing brain and language gains.
NAMLE's own definition names five abilities that make up media literacy, without a scored test to measure where a child stands.
UNICEF's parenting pages recommend balanced screen use built on expert consultation, without citing a specific study behind the advice.
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