Canada Early Years Play Report Finds Screens Lagging Behind

Canada Early Years Play is off to a strong start, according to a first-ever national assessment of children under five. The report card, led by a researcher at the University of Alberta, finds most young children meet recommendations for movement and sleep, while screen time is the clear weak spot. That split matters because the early years lay down habits for speech, learning, muscle development and emotional health, and the new assessment gives Canada its first national benchmark for tracking whether those habits improve. The university account of the findings is here.

Where young children are doing well

Most children in the assessment are moving enough and sleeping enough, by the standards set for their age. The assessment shows that 67 percent met the physical activity recommendation, while 80 percent met the sleep recommendation. Those are encouraging starting points, especially for an age group that has historically received less attention than school-age children, even though early childhood is a critical stage of development.

The sleep guidance itself varies sharply by age, which is part of why a single average would mislead. Babies under one year are advised to sleep between 12 and 17 hours a day including naps, toddlers aged one to two between 11 and 14 hours, and preschoolers aged three to four between 10 and 13 hours. For movement, babies are advised to get at least 30 minutes of tummy time, while toddlers and preschoolers are advised to get at least 180 minutes of physical activity through the day, including energetic play for the older group. Those benchmarks give families and educators concrete targets, rather than a vague instruction to be more active.

Screens are the weak link

Screen time tells a different story. Fewer than half of children met screen limits, at 48 percent, and only 25 percent met all three recommendations together. In other words, a child can be active and well rested and still fall short on the combined measure, because the screen habit is pulling in the opposite direction. For children aged two to four, sedentary screen time is advised to stay within one hour, and for children under two, none at all is recommended.

"While it is encouraging that young children are off to a promising start for physical activity and sleep, screen time has emerged as a challenge, and a healthy balance of these behaviours is integral for optimal growth and development in the early years," said Valerie Carson, a professor who led development of the assessment and serves as its chief scientific officer. Canada Early Years Play therefore faces a practical question rather than a medical mystery: how do families, carers and communities make the screen limit as normal as the bedtime routine? The national organisation behind the assessment sets out its findings here.

Not every child gets the same chance

The assessment also finds that opportunity is uneven. Children in lower-income households had less access to recreation facilities, playgrounds, parks and green spaces, and along with peers in rural areas and those from racial and ethnic minority populations, they were less likely to take part in structured activity such as swimming lessons and soccer. While 41 percent of young children take part in such activity, just 22 percent of communities have a formal strategy mapped out for physical activity and sport. That gap between family effort and community planning is one of the clearest findings in the whole assessment, according to an expert question-and-answer on the report here.

Child care settings look like one of the most promising places to close the gap. The findings show that 78 percent of early childhood education settings provide access to facilities and equipment that support movement, yet only 53 percent provide training and professional development for educators on movement, sedentary behaviour and sleep. Investing in that training would help the adults who spend the day with young children turn good intentions into consistent routines, from outdoor play to calmer wind-down time.

Canada Early Years Play will be judged in future years by whether this first benchmark becomes a turning point. Governments, planners, health professionals, educators and families all have a part to play, from building safe places to play to writing screen limits into daily schedules. The wider community picture matters too, and recent coverage has looked at how community gardens bring neighbours together outdoors, how repair cafes turn shared skills into local wins, and how costume swaps make family celebrations cheaper and greener. Those efforts are not substitutes for policy, but they show what happens when a neighbourhood treats shared space as a health resource. If the next assessment shows screens catching up with sleep and movement, it will be because that kind of everyday support became easier to find, not because parents were simply told to try harder.