How to tell good screen time from the rest.
"Screen time" gets talked about as if it's all the same thing — but an hour spent solving puzzles is nothing like an hour spent scrolling. The real question isn't how much screen time, but what kind. Here's a parent's guide to telling the difference.
Before worrying about the clock, ask three things about what your child is doing on screen:
The best digital activities look a lot like the best offline ones: they're creative, challenging, and finite. Puzzle games, drawing tools, building games, and quizzes all ask a child to think and create. This is the kind of screen time that can genuinely support learning — and there's good evidence that well-designed educational games improve everything from math fluency to persistence.
Videos and shows aren't bad, but they're passive. They're best in moderation and even better when you watch together and talk about what you saw. The same goes for most "reward loop" games — fine in small doses, but keep an eye on whether your child can stop happily.
Be cautious with anything designed to be endless, anything with chat features that expose children to strangers, and anything that pushes constant notifications. These are engineered to capture attention rather than serve your child.
Screen time isn't the enemy — poorly designed screen time is. When the games your child plays are safe, active, and secretly educational, that time on screen can genuinely help them grow. That's the entire idea behind Sparks: short, joyful, finite games with no chat, no data collection, and something worth keeping at the end of every one.