Do video calls count as screen time?
No. A video call with a grandparent, an aunt or a parent who is away is the one screen that many guidelines make an exception for, and it is the one exception the book behind this site makes to its own line of no screens before six. The reason is not that the screen is better on a call. It is that the person on it can answer.
What the guidelines say
- American Academy of Pediatrics (2016): no screen media under eighteen months other than video calls.
- Canadian Paediatric Society (2022): no screens under two, with video calls excepted.
- Singapore (2025): none under eighteen months, including in the background, except video calls.
- India’s pediatric academy (2021-22): no screens under two except video calls.
Not every guideline spells it out, but the reasoning behind the exception is the same everywhere: a baby learns language by taking turns with a person who answers, and a call can carry that turn when a recording cannot.
Why a live call is different
Toddlers learn from it. In an experiment with 36 toddlers aged two to two and a half, an adult taught new verbs in three ways: in person, over a live video call and in a recording of the same adult saying the same things. The toddlers learned from the person in the room and from the video call, and not from the recording. The screen was the same. The turn was the difference. In another study, toddlers of one to two years learned names and games from a partner on a live video call and recognized that partner a week later.
Babies can tell. In an experiment from the 1980s, two-month-old babies and their mothers, in separate rooms, played over a live video link: the baby cooed, the mother answered, the baby smiled. Then the researchers swapped the live picture for a replay of the same mother, recorded earlier in the session, as warm and as animated as before. The babies turned away, frowned and grew distressed. A repeat of the experiment in Paris, with a tighter design, found the same. At two months, a baby could tell a person who was answering her from a recording of the same person.
A recording teaches little. Nine-month-old American babies who spent twelve sessions with Mandarin speakers in the room learned to tell apart two Mandarin sounds that English does not use. Babies who got the same sessions on video, or on audio alone, learned nothing. The question to ask of any screen in front of a baby is not what it is called but whether it can answer her.
What makes a call a conversation
The rule the book uses is simple: a screen with a person in it who is answering is a conversation, and a screen with a person in it who is not is a screen. A recorded video message from grandma, however loving, is a recording. A live call where grandma can see the child, answer her, wait for her and follow what she is looking at is talk. Some ways to keep it that way:
- Ask, then wait. “What do you have in your hand?” Then wait, longer than feels natural, for a look, a sound or a word, and answer it.
- Do not turn it into a performance. The call is for her turns, not for an audience.
- Follow her lead. If she wants to show the cat, the call is about the cat.
- Sing a song with a pause in it. “Twinkle, twinkle, little…” and wait. She will fill the pause before she can say the word.
- Use the language you share. A baby learns a language from people who speak it to her, and a grandparent speaking the family’s other language on a call can help where a video cannot.
- Hold the phone at her level, and keep the call short enough that she is still in it.
- When the call ends, the phone goes back in its spot. A call is an exception that stays an exception.
For grandparents
If you are a grandparent, you may have two things a young child needs most: time, which her parents often do not have, and a face that answers, which a screen does not. You do not need a method. Talk to her about what she is doing, wait for her to answer, copy her sounds, sing the songs you know and read the same book until you can recite it.
If her parents ask you to keep the television off while she is with you, it may sound like a rule. Take it as a job instead: the one who sings, the one who walks her to the same tree every day, the one who reads the same five books forty times each. If she is used to a screen at your house, expect some loud days at first.
You may also notice something her parents cannot, because you do not see her every day. If she does not turn when you say her name, does not point to show you things, does not look up at your face or has stopped doing something she used to do, say so, gently, once, and suggest a hearing test first. Naming what it is belongs to a clinician. Noticing belongs to you.
Common questions
Does a call count toward the hour for a two-year-old? In the guidelines that make the exception, no. Background television, a show watched alone and a game played alone do count.
What about a call where my toddler only watches the adults talk? The exception is for the turn. If nobody on the call is talking with her, it is closer to a screen she watches than a conversation she is in.
Is “virtual autism” about video calls? “Virtual autism” is not a medical diagnosis. It is a phrase some parents search for about autism-like signs in young children with heavy screen use, and video calls with family are not what it is about. If anything about your child’s development worries you, talk with your child’s doctor and ask for an evaluation. What the phrase means has more.
Sources: American Academy of Pediatrics 2016; Canadian Paediatric Society 2022; Singapore Ministry of Health 2025; Indian Academy of Pediatrics 2021-22; Roseberry, Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff 2014; Myers et al. 2017; Murray and Trevarthen 1985; Nadel et al. 1999; Kuhl, Tsao and Liu 2003; Hoff et al. 2012. Full references are in chapters 4, 5, 15, 22 and 23 and appendix C of Virtual Autism; the sources page lists the key studies behind this site, and the guidelines page summarizes national screen-time guidance.
Written with AI assistance and checked against the cited sources.
General information, not medical advice. If you are worried about your child, talk to your child’s doctor.