How much screen time should a child have? The Dutch 2025 guideline

The Dutch Healthy Screen Use guideline, published in June 2025, sets a maximum for recreational screen time per age:

• 0 to 2 — no screen
• 2 to 4 — half an hour a day at most
• 4 to 8 — one hour a day
• 8 to 10 — an hour and a half
• 10 to 12 — two hours
• 12 and over — three hours

That is the answer. The rest of this is about what surrounds it, because the guideline is not only those numbers — and in practice the part around them is the useful part.

A note on where this applies: it is Dutch national guidance, and KidsTube is a Dutch site with an English catalog. It lines up closely with what paediatric bodies elsewhere recommend, and the age bands are the clearest published set we know of, which is why they are the ones quoted here.

Time is one of four things

The guideline describes healthy screen use as more than the clock: the balance against the rest of a day, what is actually on the screen, and screens being used in company where possible — with a parent, or a friend.

That last one is the advice that recurs most and gets quoted least, because it is harder than a number. There is a separate post on watching together.

When the number is not achievable

For a lot of households half an hour a day is not a description of reality. That is not a reason to dismiss the guidance and not a reason to feel bad. What sits underneath it is more usable than the ceiling: screen time does most harm when it displaces sleep, movement, or talking to someone — and least when it does not.

Practically, the shape often matters more than the duration. Something with an ending is easier to stop than something without. A three-minute song offers a natural stopping point twenty times an hour, which is why Super Simple Songs is easier to ration than a twenty-minute episode, whatever is in either.

Why we are the ones writing this

KidsTube is a video site. A page explaining how little video a child should watch does not help us, and it is here anyway, for two reasons. You were going to look it up regardless. And we do not solve the problem you actually have: we can say what is suitable to watch, but we have no button that makes it stop after twenty minutes. There is a post about that, including what it means for the way one episode leads to the next here.

Further reading

What suits each age: two, three, four, five and six.