I’m Worried That Letting My Baby FaceTime Counts As Screen Time
There are few things I don’t feel guilty about as a mother. When my husband and I scroll through pictures and videos of our 14-month-old daughter each night, only half of my mind is actually present, participating in our daily conversation about how it is possible that we have the best child on earth. The other half is stuck in a torturous loop of what I could have done better. I worry that we’re not reading enough books together per day; that she doesn’t know enough sign language and that it’s my fault; that sometimes I listen to podcasts while I care for her, and who knows what sort of irreparable harm that’s doing. And now, lately, I’ve been preoccupied with our morning routine.
I set my daughter up in her high chair at the start of each day, the tray covered in various foods — a scrambled egg, carefully cut blueberries, those wildly expensive yogurt melts — that she will either eat or, more likely, throw onto the floor. I settle in next to her and take out my phone. When my daughter hears the trilling sound, she lights up because she knows what’s coming. My mother’s face fills the screen of my phone, and the three of us FaceTime while I drink my morning coffee.
It’s a version of what I’ve done for as long as I can remember — call my mother before starting my day — but now, it’s a three-way call with my daughter babbling between us. I tell my mom about how the baby slept the night before and what we have planned for the day. She tells me any pertinent family gossip and plays peekaboo with my daughter. My mom lives in a different state than us, and though she visits at least once a month, she tells me that my daughter seems like a different child every time she sees her, the warp-speed growth of those first few years changing her each time. FaceTime feels like a way of keeping them connected to each other between visits. This way, my mom isn’t just a person my daughter sees once a month. She’s a person my daughter sees every day. But do these FaceTime calls with my mom count as screen time?
You know, the thing we’re supposed to, as parents, limit if not ban entirely? On the most fundamental level, I am putting a phone in front of my daughter’s face during these calls. Still, isn’t it good for her to talk to her grandmother? I’m not the only parent stressing about this. On r/NewParents, one anonymous user worried about the same thing wrote, “Fwiw, Google says no, video chatting is fine.” Still, they felt compelled to ask, “If we show photos of family, does that count as well? Our goal is to delay/avoid reliance on devices so that they can have the proper brain and social development as they grow.” On r/Mommit, a poster says her parents live out of state and love to FaceTime with their grandkids; plus, it gives her time to “do chores, cook dinner, or just take a break.” “It objectively is/obviously taking away from practice with motor skills,” she writes, “but it’s good for their language development and relationship with grandparents.” Over on r/ScienceBasedParenting, the debate gets even more granular — should parents be limiting screen time because of the physical effect of looking at a screen or the “lack of in-person interactions”?
Like most parents, I want to set my daughter up for the best possible life and, in 2025, that means shielding her from screen time. Research into the effects of screen time on infants show negative effects like problems with attention, executive function, and focus. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends “very limited” screen time for children younger than 2 years old. I don’t let my daughter watch television, and my husband and I don’t watch it when she’s awake. But it’s borderline embarrassing how difficult it can be to keep myself from reaching for my phone when I’m with her. I’ve even started leaving a physical book in her nursery so that when she’s playing independently, I can read instead of scroll or tap on my phone. Really — I’m trying. Despite these efforts, I still pick up my phone to FaceTime my mother (and sometimes, my sisters or my in-laws) every day for myriad reasons — because they want to see my daughter, because sometimes I’m lonely as the default parent of a toddler, because we need an activity to fill the hours of expanding wake windows.
Karyna, a mother of a 4-month-old, tells me she has the same worries. To cope, she usually uses the back camera on her phone so her son isn’t looking directly into the screen, though occasionally she uses the front camera so he can see the family members who are talking to him. “I keep it short and sweet,” she says, limiting the duration of calls. Kate, a mother of a 7-month-old, tries to curb how much of her daughter’s time is spent on FaceTime, only doing it about once a month so her family members who don’t live close by can connect with her daughter. “I’m like, Am I ruining her brain?” she says. “But then I try to take a deep breath.”
There are an endless number of things to worry about as parents in 2025. All I want to do is figure out if my FaceTime habit should be on that list. Is all screen time created equally? (And equally as bad for my daughter’s developing brain?)
“You can think of screen time as coming in two flavors: passive and dynamic,” says Harvey Karp, M.D., the best-selling author of Happiest Baby on the Block. “Passive is zoning out in front of a cartoon. Dynamic is when your child is thinking, talking, and engaging — like FaceTime. It’s full of social interaction, surprise, and emotional connection.” Dr. Karp notes that in-person interaction is the best for toddlers and kids, though of course that’s not always possible. My parents and in-laws live an eight-hour drive away from us. Sometimes, my daughter won’t see them for a month at a time. My mother-in-law once told me she was worried that my daughter would forget her in the time between visits, but last time they saw each other, my daughter toddled up to her and hugged her. She laid her head on her grandmother’s shoulder. That’s worth the screen time.
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