LUNCH & LEARN | Beyond Screen Time

This webinar is formally accredited for CPD purposes. A certificate of attendance will be issued to all professionals who attend the live session. *Subject to approval

““Screens are rewiring baby’s brains.” “The screen-time crisis is changing childhood.” “AI will take over childhood”

As with every heated topic, research adds nuance to the conversation. And screentime is no different. 

Join us for the Parent Sense Lunch & Learn, our monthly webinar series for professionals, as Meg Faure explores what the research really says about screen time with Dr Rachel Barr from Georgetown University. They share practical, evidence-based guidance for those working with children and families.

“No screens under two” is the rule most practitioners default to, but the research tells a more nuanced story, and understanding that nuance will change how you guide every family in your care.

We question whether the focus should really be how many minutes… And talk about why it is more about what children watch, why parents reach for the screen, who is in the room and what happens in the moments before and after. 

Over the past three decades, developmental science has shifted dramatically, from counting screen time to mapping the full ecology of how families live with media. The evidence is richer, more complex and more practically useful than the blanket guidelines suggest.

In this Lunch & Learn Meg Faure will be in conversation with Dr. Rachel Barr, one of the world’s leading researchers in child development and digital media, for a research-led deep dive designed specifically for healthcare practitioners, early childhood educators and childcare professionals. Drawing on her DREAMER framework, her groundbreaking work on infant learning from screens, and her most recent YouTube and video chat research, Dr. Barr will give you a map for the evidence and practical guidance you can use with families from your very next consultation.

What You’ll Learn

Dr. Rachel Barr will guide you through:

• Why “screen time” was always the wrong central question and what family media ecology gives us instead
• The DREAMER framework: a research model for understanding how individual, family, motivational and structural factors interact to shape media outcomes
• The transfer deficit: what the science shows about how much infants and toddlers actually learn from screens compared to live interaction and why this matters clinically
• Content quality over quantity: what her team’s YouTube and YouTube Kids research reveals about algorithmically-driven design and what families are actually watching
• The psychology of parental motivation: why parents reach for the screen matters as much as what they hand over, and how motivation predicts downstream outcomes
• Media as emotion regulation: the trade-off between short-term calming and longer-term emotional reactivity, and what diary studies show about transitions away from screens
• Technoference, parental burnout and the structural inequities shaping digital access across families
• What convergence of global, multi-method evidence means for practitioners and how to move from blanket rules to anticipatory, evidence-based guidance

Practical Application

You’ll walk away with:

• A new clinical framework: the shift from screen time counting to family media ecology, ready to apply in practice
• Evidence-based nuance: the confidence to move beyond blanket guidelines and offer families genuinely useful, contextualised guidance
• Conversation tools: practical language for exploring media motivations, joint engagement and content quality with parents
• Red flag awareness: an understanding of when media use signals stress, emotional dysregulation or structural vulnerability that needs support
• Transferable research literacy: familiarity with the DREAMER model and convergence evidence so you can continue to interpret new findings as they emerge

Whether you work in paediatrics, general practice, occupational therapy, psychology, early childhood education or childcare, this session will give you the most current, nuanced picture of child development and digital media available  delivered by one of the researchers who built it.