Under two, the screen stays off
The phone is the easiest babysitter in the house, and for a baby under two it is the one the guideline tells you not to use.
Raising Children says screen time and digital toys are normal for most children and teenagers, and can sit inside a healthy life later. The line for the youngest is different. Current national and international guidelines, as they put it, recommend that children under 2 years do not have screen time other than video chatting.
Not a bright show while you cook. Not your camera roll. Not a tablet propped on the bouncer.
Video chat is the exception, a face that talks back, not a cartoon that fills the silence.
I am not going to stretch older-child tips down onto a six month old and pretend they are the same rule. The page points onwards to balance for ages 2 to 5 and up. Quality, posture, sleep, actual hobbies, time with people.
Useful when you get there. Irrelevant as permission now.
What you can do under two is be in the room. Talk. Floor.
Walk. The tummy time and the pram and the boring narrating of the nappy are the program. A screen instead of those is not neutral.
You will be tired enough to do it anyway some nights. Do not rename it learning. If you need ten minutes to stay sane, put them in a safe cot and step out, which you already know from the crying page, rather than handing them a glow.
Your phone is part of their environment before they have one. If every feed is you scrolling, that is the model. Park it face down for the feed.
Answer the work message after. The baby will not remember the email. They will learn whether a face was there.
When they are older and the rules loosen, decide them before the habit is a fight. The under two line is the clean one. No screen, except a video call with a person who loves them.
You can hold that line in your own house even if a cafe has a TV on. You do not have to apologise for being the dad who puts the phone in his pocket. When they are older, the fights get louder if you never had a rule.
Start boring. The television stays off during meals. Your show waits until they are in bed.
A video call is a person, and you stay in it with them so it does not turn into a parked screen with a relative attached. If work insists on a laptop in the same room, angle it away from the baby. They do not need your spreadsheet, and they do not need the glow.
Source: Raising Children Network