time / Vision
Screen and outdoor time reference
What each body says about screen time and outdoor time, by age.
Against a reference
How old is the child
Fill in the fields above and the result appears here.
Published guidance retrieved by age and source, keeping each source’s own definition of the time.
Step by step
Matched by age, one source at a time. Bodies do not agree on what “screen time” even counts — some include every screen, some exclude schoolwork, some cover only recreational use. Averaging them would produce a recommendation nobody actually issued.
What this number cannot tell you
No single country’s guidance is applied to every child, and no myopia risk is calculated from hours used — that needs findings from cohort studies, not a table of durations.
An example
At 8 years: China’s myopia guidance asks for at least 120 minutes outdoors in daylight; the WHO and Japan give only a statement for screen time at this age, no number of hours.
Common questions
- Why is there no number?
- There is no figure here that can be given with confidence, so none is given. The normal range for questions like this is wide anyway — a few minutes with a paediatrician or dentist usually settles it.
- What if my child’s age or country is not covered?
- It will say plainly that this age is not covered, rather than borrow figures from another age or another country. How far a standard reaches is set by whoever published it, and stretching it gives a placing that is simply wrong.
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The others in the same group.