About one-third of children entering preschool in 2025 didn’t know how to handle a book properly, with some trying to swipe at pages as if they were a phone or tablet.
These findings come from a school readiness survey of more than 1,000 early elementary educators in England and Wales. Meanwhile, in the United States, 4 in 10 children have their own tablet by the age of 2, and 75% of parents whose children use screen media do not apply limits, according to a 2025 report titled “Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight,” produced by Common Sense Media.
While lawmakers and schools have focused on cellphone use and excessive screen time among teens, very young children’s media habits have received less attention. Educators are now noticing the impact firsthand, as early screen exposure can affect school readiness.
“This year, my students are not able to attend to books. When asked, the parents say that their child does not enjoy books, so they do not read to them regularly,” commented a respondent to a January 2026 EdWeek Research Center survey of 1,163 early educators, mostly preschool teachers.
Time spent with screens can take away from activities that build early literacy skills, like being read to. And as most schools expect children to be ready to read at ever-younger ages, excessive or non-age-appropriate screen exposure may place young students at a significant disadvantage.
The American Academy of Pediatrics latest policy statement on digital ecosystems and children, published in January 2026, does not offer specific restrictions on screen time for children under 5. It does note that infants under 18 months “struggle to transfer information from a screen to the real world because of immature cognitive processing.” It also associates heavier noneducational and solo screen media with delays in language, cognitive, and other forms of development.
Many parents struggling to maintain shared reading habits with children
Historically, before children learned to read, they relied mainly on caregivers to expose them to stories—primarily through print books. That’s happening less frequently now.
A survey conducted by the National Institute for Early Education at Rutgers University of roughly 1,000 parents of children ages 3 to 5 between 2020 and 2023 found shared reading habits have not fully recovered from the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, 85% of parents read to their children; this fell to 65% during the pandemic and then rose to 73% by December 2023.
The top factors that prevent parents from reading to their children: “I am too tired” (39%), “my child won’t sit still long enough” (36%), and “my child prefers screen time” (33%).
Meanwhile, screen habits of the youngest children are evolving. According to the 2025 Common Sense Media report, nearly half (48%) of children ages 0 to 8 have watched short videos on platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or Instagram Reels—formats not designed for very young audiences.
Tiffany Munzer, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at the University of Michigan and lead author of the AAP’s 2026 policy statement on digital media and children, explains the effects that some media content can have on very young children.
Most 3-year-olds focus on everything in their immediate environment, Munzer explains. Bright flashing lights, sound effects, and other digital entertainment featurescan distract rather than enhance learning.
“Infants and toddlers struggle to transfer information from a 2-D screen into the 3-D world because of cognitive constraints,” Munzer said.
Conversely, when caregivers read a story to a young child, they can transfer information in the print book to something that a child has seen in real life, Munzer said. For example, a picture of zoo animals in a book can be tied to a child’s own visit to the zoo.
Munzer acknowledged that a well-designed e-book can promote emergent literacy skills such as letter recognition and early phonemic awareness, but that most don’t.
Shared experiences of reading together way better than solo screen time
Some experts feel that even well-designed media that promote early literacy or other learning shouldn’t stand in for adults reading to children.
“By introducing screens to young toddlers, even if it’s a game or a program that promotes literacy, I worry that it’s a substitute for real human interaction between the young child and the adult,” said Megan Bone, a pediatric neurologist at the Baltimore-based Kennedy Krieger Institute, a nonprofit that treats children with developmental disabilities and brain disorders.
The back-and-forth exchanges that happen when young children listen and watch a caregiver read a book generally can’t be replicated when interacting with an electronic device, Bone argues. “And that’s really how we know that young children continue to build their language skills,” she said, “through back and forth shared interaction.”
