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Advisory Warns of Harm
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the Surgeon General’s Warning on the Harms of Screen Use: An Advisory and Toolkit on How to Protect Children and Adolescents on May 20, 2026, urging families, schools, and providers to reduce children’s screen time.
“Children today spend more time on screens than sleeping, exercising, or engaging face-to-face with family and friends”
The advisory says children and adolescents now spend as much or more time on screens as they do sleeping or in school, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said, "Children today spend more time on screens than sleeping, exercising, or engaging face-to-face with family and friends — and we are seeing the consequences in rising rates of anxiety, depression, obesity, and developmental challenges,".
HHS also tied excessive and sometimes compulsive screen use to real-world harm, with the HHS Office of the Surgeon General saying national estimates show adolescents average seven to nine hours a day on entertainment screens and most report using their devices right before bed.
The advisory’s toolkit highlights warning signs that screen use may be causing harm, including irritability when devices are taken away, secrecy around online behavior, withdrawal from offline activities, and repeated attempts to reduce use without success.
In parallel, USA Today reported the advisory was released May 20 as President Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general awaited confirmation, and it said the "Harms of Screen Use" bulletin warns children and teens are spending more time on digital devices than sleeping or attending school.
Limits and the “5 Ds”
The advisory and related toolkit recommend specific screen-time limits, including "none for children under 18 months old, less than 1 hour per day for children under 6, and 2 hours per day for 6–18-year-olds,".
It also urges parents to use what the report calls the "5 Ds" framework, including discussing healthy screen use with household members and modeling the healthy screen use behaviors they want children to follow.
In the Washington Examiner’s account, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote that many features added to digital tools to keep users engaged lead to "addiction-like behavior," while the advisory calls for schools to restrict cell phone use and prioritize "pen-and-paper curricula."
STAT described the report’s approach as broad and non-prescriptive, noting that tech companies could design products "for user well-being, not engagement," and that the report asks them to display warnings about the harms of screen time before each use.
Education Week reported the recommendations also include bell-to-bell bans on student cellphone use in schools and said the office recommends schools invest in physical textbooks and paper-and-pencil classroom assignments, with explicit exceptions for students in special education whose individual learning plans call for digital tools.
Schools, Platforms, and Research
HHS said the advisory urges action across sectors, with schools able to reduce or ban non-instructional device use, strengthen digital citizenship education, and create more opportunities for in-person engagement.
“We are not trying to tell parents they’re not doing a good job”
Technology companies were urged to prioritize user well-being by reducing manipulative design features, increasing transparency, and making safety settings easier for families to use, while policymakers were called to advance stronger privacy and safety protections and support long-term research.
Education Week reported that HHS argued it is acting despite "knowledge gaps where focused research is needed … we cannot wait for every question to be settled before acting," and it said the report calls for longitudinal studies on overall outcomes of using technology in the classroom.
The Washington Examiner also described the advisory’s emphasis on empowering parents, quoting Haridopolos saying, "We are not trying to tell parents they’re not doing a good job," and adding, "We need to just let them know what the evidence is out there, so they can be empowered with knowledge to make those decisions."
In a separate discussion of the broader debate around screen time, Scientific American said the advisory warns too much screen time threatens children’s mental and physical health, and it quoted HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. saying, "Many children’s screens dominate daily life from the moment they wake up until the moment they fall asleep,".
