Study shows screen time for children under 2 has more than doubled

CHICAGO -- A new study shows children under 2 years old spend twice the amount of time in front of a screen each day as they did 20 years ago.

That screen was often a TV set, with the television viewing of toddlers rising fivefold between 1997 and 2014.

Children ages 3 to 5 actually spent less time on screens than younger kids -- around 2.5 hours per day.

The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages all media use for kids younger than 2 years old. Officials also recommend limiting screen time for kids ages 2 to 5 to just 1 hour per day of high-quality programming.

Researchers used data from the panel study of income dynamics, the world's longest-running household survey.

Directed by the University of Michigan, the study has been tracking U.S. family trends since 1968.

The findings were published online Feb. 18 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.