Something has shifted in early childhood.
This isn't simply a story about children spending too much time on screens. It's a story about what has quietly disappeared to make room for a multitude of devices and what that means.
Every hour spent passively in front of a screen is an hour spent not talking, moving, imagining, exploring or making sense of the world through play.
Nowhere does that matter more than in the first five years when children's brains are developing at an extraordinary pace – faster than at any other time in our lives, in fact, as the Royal Foundation for the Centre for Early Childhood has noted.
The consequences of this shift are already telling, with Kindred Square’s School Readiness Survey 2025 finding that teachers had reported that 28% of children were not able to use books correctly (they were, for example, swiping and tapping the pages of a book instead of turning them).
Inching Closer to a Tipping Point
Over the past year, we've seen a significant shift in national policy and public debate. The Labour government's Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life strategy introduced, for the first time, clear guidance on screen use for children under five.
New legislation is also strengthening protections for children online. At the same time, charities, academics, health professionals and children's organisations are renewing calls for a national play strategy, recognising that play isn’t a luxury but something that is fundamentally essential to children's development and wellbeing.
For those of us who have championed the importance of play for many years, this feels like a watershed moment. The evidence has been building for some time: the first five years are a period of extraordinary brain development, when children's experiences shape their language, relationships, physical health and lifelong learning.
But when screens begin to replace conversations, movements, explorations and imaginative play, those opportunities cannot simply be recovered later.
But policies and guidance alone won't change childhood. A strategy document doesn't change a child's afternoon. If we want children to spend less time on screens, we have to offer something better in its place. That something is play – simple, everyday opportunities to explore, create, connect and discover the world around them.
Solid Foundations To Last a Lifetime
The habits children develop in their earliest years – and the habits of the adults around them – shape the trajectory for everything that follows.
The first five years are a unique window of opportunity, a time when even the smallest changes in everyday experiences can have a lasting impact, making it one of the highest-leverage and most cost-effective points to support children and families.
Our experience through 50 Things To Do Before You’re Five has shown us that change doesn’t happen through guidance or policy alone. Those things are vital in setting direction, but families need practical ways to turn ambition into action. They need ideas that are simple, repeatable, affordable and achievable within everyday life.
For years, we have worked alongside families and practitioners to create more opportunities for screen-free play, from exploring outdoors and getting creative to sharing stories, singing and building together. It’s these small, everyday moments that are the building blocks of healthy development.
The fact that local authorities across the country are choosing to commission and embed the 50 Things model shows that this approach works not just at an individual family level, but as part of wider systems change.
When we make play easier, more visible and more accessible, we help create the conditions children need to thrive. The growing recognition of this issue is welcome, but we believe something is still missing: a bigger national conversation.
Less Screen Time, More Play Time
There is currently no shared space where everyone with a role to play in children's lives – practitioners, health professionals, researchers, policymakers, educators and families – can come together to explore the challenges, share evidence and identify practical solutions. Yet this is a conversation that reaches across every part of society.
It’s why we’ve decided to launch our first-ever Less Screen Time, More Play Time Conference: to provide the UK with a national platform that will bring together a multitude of voices from across different sectors to examine what is changing in childhood, why it matters and what we can do differently.
It includes leading thinkers and practitioners like Professor Sam Wass, whose research explores child development and the impact of modern environments, and Dr Guddi Singh, a paediatrician who advocates for a more holistic approach to children’s health and wellbeing.
This is not about creating fear around technology or placing responsibility on families alone. It’s about working collectively to protect the experiences we know children need so that they get the best possible start in life.
It also represents the start of a wider conversation, one that recognises play as fundamental to childhood and asks how we create the conditions for it to thrive.
From Awareness to Action
We are at a moment where growing recognition needs to become meaningful action. The question is not whether technology has a place in children’s lives – it does. The question is what we are allowing it to replace and whether we are protecting the everyday experiences that help children learn, grow and thrive.
The answer will not come from one sector alone. It requires a shared commitment to putting play back at the centre of early childhood. Our Less Screen Time, More Play Time National Conference is a space that aims to bring that conversation together – to listen, to challenge and to shape what comes next.
For more information about the conference and to book tickets (if you’re quick, you can still snap up an early bird discount), head to our conference website.