How many Bluey episodes is too many?

Teenagers’ and children’s technology use has come under a spotlight as Australia’s world-first social media ban looms large.

A high-intensity debate over the past year has focused on meaty issues of the mental health effects of social media and screens on young people, as well as issues of cyberbullying, community and smartphone addiction, particularly for teenagers.

The ban will come as a relief for many parents. But what about babies, toddlers and small children? How should they be interacting – or not – with technology, and how should their parents be considering thorny issues of “digital hygiene”, screen time, and whether to share photos and milestones on social media?

And how many episodes of Bluey is too many?

Bluey’s 28-minute episode The Sign is the most watched program of all time on BVOD.

As with most issues related to parenting, there are no straightforward answers but plenty of opinions.

The vexed question of screen time

Dr Daniel Golshvesky, otherwise known as Dr Golly, is a high-profile Australian paediatrician and was part of the “36 months” campaign, which successfully lobbied to lift Australia’s minimum age for registering social media accounts from 13 to 16.

“Part of it was about protecting adolescents because I’m seeing the impact that it’s having, but part of that’s about protecting parents and taking the responsibility off their shoulders because there, it is just too heavy,” he says.

Dr Golly’s general recommendations are for children younger than two years to have no screen time and for those aged between two and five to be limited to less than an hour a day.

He says that for toddlers between two and five, the recommended daily screen time is approximately the length of one Disney film or six Bluey episodes.

Most Australian children spend more time on screens than is recommended, with research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies finding that less than a quarter of preschoolers and just 15 per cent of five to 12-year-olds meet screen-time guidelines.

Dr Golly: “We cannot get away from screens … the world is on screens. It’s about doing it in a safe way”.

According to the institute, excessive screen time can lead to poor health and developmental outcomes. It’s found strong evidence that for children younger than five, screen time has negative effects on weight, motor and cognitive development and social and psychological wellbeing.

But Dr Golly is also quick to not demonise screen time entirely.

“There are so many studies that talk about the impact of early screen time on brain development and the disruption to sleep,” he says.

“But the key is understanding that we cannot get away from screens, nor do we want to push that. Because the world is on screens. It’s about doing it in a safe way rather than not doing it at all.”

Should babies be on social media?

Along with screen time, one of the most pressing concerns for parents is how to treat social media, which can be stressful enough without throwing kids into the mix. Dr Golly has partnered with ASX-listed photo-sharing app Tinybeans to create a toolkit for parents focused on “digital nesting”: the concept of safeguarding a child’s digital presence from when they’re born.

The toolkit includes tips around having open discussions about how much of the child’s life to share online and avoiding tagging locations in photos to reveal a child’s whereabouts.

Understandably, many parents rush to post baby and toddler photos to public-facing social media profiles, but Tinybeans chief executive Zsofi Paterson said sharing personal details online can often make children more vulnerable to identity theft or privacy breaches.

The Tinybeans app.

“Parents don’t necessarily think about this as early as they should,” she said. “From my own experience as a mum, I did all the things that many of us do in the early weeks and months and shared with so much excitement. It’s only as they start to evolve and grow up that I’ve become more savvy and conscious of some of the risks surrounding that.

“We’re trying to bring those conversations to the forefront and encouraging having thoughtful conversations.”

The concept behind Tinybeans is to allow new parents to share photos and videos of their children with small, private groups such as close friends and family members rather than the broader public. It’s unclear whether the app would meet the government’s definition of “social media” for the purposes of its age ban, but it’s designed to be used by parents rather than their children.

“It enables the connection, the joy, and the sharing, but it actually puts the kids’ need for privacy and their digital footprint first,” Paterson says.

After a challenging financial period, Tinybeans recently refreshed its board, with former Seven West Media chief executive James Warburton becoming chair on December 31.

Dr Golly says that rather than seeing technology as black or white, moderation should be paramount so that babies and toddlers can have enriching experiences, both digital and real.

“There isn’t an industry on the planet that hasn’t benefited in some way from tech, and parenting is no different because we’ve got access to support, education, health, prevention, and all these things that are quite incredible that really do benefit parents,” he says. “It’s absolutely not fair that tech gets a bad name, but it’s about using it correctly.

“Sharing is brilliant. I think it’s lovely and beautiful and should never be discouraged. It just needs to be done in a safe way.”

A sound alternative

While Tinybeans is aimed at parents, there’s one piece of technology that recently launched in Australia aimed squarely at children, which is helping reduce their screen time.

Ben Drury is the co-founder and chief executive of Yoto, an interactive audio platform for kids. Before coming up with Yoto, Drury was the co-founder and chief executive of 7digital, a British music services provider.

Drury says that his product represents a new category of technology: hi-tech devices designed specifically for kids.

The idea was inspired by Drury’s own children and their relationship with technology, as well as Montessori principles, which encourage independent learning.

The Yoto player was released in Australia in 2024.

The resulting tech is a piece of hardware – a small cube, to be precise – that plays “Yoto cards”, which are essentially audiobooks that are inserted into the box. It launched in Australia in mid-2024.

Peppa Pig, Harry Potter, Beatrix Potter and Paddington Bear are all on offer, though there’s no Bluey, at least not yet. Parents can also purchase blank cards for grandparents to record bedtime stories or to play music files downloaded from a computer. Generative AI may also soon allow kids to be the main characters of their own stories.

“We thought, how can we give our kids access to this incredible world of audio but do it without a screen?” Drury says in an interview.

“We wanted to build a very retro, very physical experience. CDs have died, and cassettes have, too, not that they were great for kids anyway. And there were these plasticky things out there for kids, but they were pretty awful.”

Drury says some amount of screen time is a necessity for most families but that it often acts like a “digital dummy”, in that it’s an easy go-to option for parents looking for distractions.

He says for 91 per cent of parents, screen time is top of their “worry list”, and that modern parenting has seen an overall decline in child-led, independent play.

“Parenting, for most people, is the hardest thing you can do in your life, so anything we do to help families is a positive,” he says.

“We get this incredible feedback from parents all the time that we’re not necessarily replacing screen time, but we’re reducing it significantly. And audio is just way more stimulating to a child’s creativity and imagination than the video equivalent.”

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