Why Today’s Toddlers Are Struggling To Tell Stories

Ever since the “tablet boom” of the early 2010s, parents have been in a bind. Tablets are cheap, and the dollars spent go a long way. The latest Amazon Fire Kids tablet is just $55 and comes loaded with features: calmer flights, quieter car trips, a birthday present that is sure to please. Count those extra minutes a tablet allows to wash some dishes or pay a bill, and it starts looking like a good deal.

That helps to explain why we found — in a 2025 survey of more than 24,000 parents — that nearly half of American three-year-olds use a Tablet, iPad, or Kindle, and many of these are used with few or no restrictions.

But parents know that tablets come with another, less visible price tag. Endless battles over content restrictions and screen time rules come standard. Not to mention the guilt (and judgment) many parents feel post purchase. But among all these challenges, one concern is at the top of every parent’s mind: what will the device do to my kid?

This concern isn’t without reason. Studies show that tablet exposure is associated with addictive behavior, limited attention spans, and worse emotional control. The negative effects of screen time on kids have led the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend no screens before 18 months, and under one hour of daily (high-quality) screen time for children between ages two and five.

Are American families adopting these standards? Unfortunately, not so much. Using data from the 2024 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), we find that the majority of American children are exceeding these recommended time limits. Indeed, the parents or caregivers of over half of children between ages three and five report two or more hours of daily weekday screen time use by their child, well over the one-hour recommended maximum.

What does this mean for kids? Drawing on a sample of 16,045 children from the 2020 to 2024 NSCH, we explored the association between screen time and verbal development among three-year-olds. In particular, we looked at the share of three-year-olds who can speak in three-word sentences, ask “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where” questions, and tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. We examined each of these outcomes by the number of hours parents said their kids used screens on a typical weekday outside of schoolwork. Screen use included time spent in front of a TV, computer, or cellphone, playing video games, browsing the internet, or using social media.

Higher rates of screen time are significantly correlated with worse outcomes for each of these three abilities. Whereas 95% of three-year-olds with less than one hour of daily screen time can ask questions, just 82% with four or more hours have reached this milestone. In other words, three-year-olds with excessively high screen time use are 3.5 times as likely to have missed this developmental milestone as those with minimal screen time use.

More striking, however, are the disparities in the ability to tell a story. Whereas 83% of children with less than an hour of screen time can tell a story, just 56% with four or more hours of screen time can do the same. Indeed, we found a five percentage-point decline in the share who can tell a story for each additional hour of screen time.

These drop-offs are quite steep. It’s worth asking: is screen time the source of these disparities, or is some other culprit to blame?

Controlling for social and demographic factors like child race, sex, family structure, household income, and parental education, screen time remains a strong predictor of each child’s verbal development. We find that three or more hours of daily screen time is significantly associated with lower rates of the ability to speak in three-word sentences or ask questions. Screen time of one or more hours daily is significantly associated with lower rates of storytelling. Across these three outcomes, socioeconomic factors explain about a quarter of the relationship between screen time and verbal development.

The relationship between screen time and delayed verbal development persists across demographics. Furthermore, it holds up when we account for parental engagement, measured by how often a parent reads to a child. We find that three or more hours of daily screen time is as predictive of lower storytelling ability as being read to less than four days a week.

Across our three variables, the inability to tell a story is the most strongly associated with higher screen time. This may be due, in part, to storytelling being a more advanced skill (the CDC lists storytelling as an expected milestone by age 5), as well as storytelling requiring imagination, which may be blunted by extended passive screen time.

As these data are cross-sectional, we are unable to demonstrate that higher screen time causes delayed verbal development. A growing body of research links more screen time with poorer cognitive and language development. The extent to which this relationship is causal remains unclear.

It’s important to note that not all screen time is equal. In contrast to violent media, educational screen time is associated with higher executive function among young children, although screen exposure is still associated with lower executive function overall. Co-viewing with a parent appears to have protective effects over solo viewing. Regardless, young children learn best through face-to-face interaction as opposed to screens.

Not all families have this luxury, however. We find that children living with single parents are over twice as likely to have four or more hours of daily screen time than children growing up with married parents. Additionally, three-year-old children from working-class families, where neither parent has a college degree, are 86% more likely to use screens at least four hours a day than those with a college-educated parent. Evidently, digital disconnection is not evenly distributed. Avoiding screen use in favor of more constructive activities requires free time that many single parents and working-class families do not have. Those who find themselves in a bind, living paycheck to paycheck, may be more likely to rely on screens as a last resort.

Such disparities in screen time provide further reason why parents need support when it comes to technology. This includes modeling strategies to limit screen time in the home, passing laws that give parents more control over their child’s tech use, and supporting home environments that make limited technology use possible. Screens might be here to stay, but parents should get to decide the place they hold in their kid’s early years.

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This is republished with permission from the Institute for Family Studies. The original, “More Screen Time, Less Storytelling,” can be found here.

Isabella Dini is a Research Associate for the Get Married Initiative at IFS. Grant Bailey is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and is Deputy Director of the Get Married Initiative.