Parents sometimes worry that a screen-free preschool is being extreme. The research suggests the opposite. Here is what the evidence actually says.
Kawa Early Years has a non-negotiable screen-free policy. No tablets, televisions, projectors, or phones used by children. Not as a reward, not during rest, not for five minutes to settle a child. The policy is absolute and grounded in science.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, and dozens of independent research bodies have reviewed the evidence. Their conclusions are consistent. For children under 18 months: no screen time except video calls. For ages 2 to 5: a maximum of one hour per day of high-quality content with an engaged caregiver.
Young children develop language, social understanding and cognitive skills through one primary mechanism: responsive interaction with caring adults and peers. Every hour of screen time is an hour not spent in conversation, physical play, creative exploration or being read to. These are the interactions that actually build a developing brain.
Research shows children learn language almost exclusively from live human interaction, not recorded voices. A child can hear Mandarin on a screen for months without acquiring a single word. The same child will pick up words rapidly from a live speaker who engages directly with them. This is the video deficit effect, replicated across dozens of studies.
The marketing around educational apps is powerful and often misleading. Studies examining whether apps marketed as educational produce learning gains in children under five consistently find little to no benefit. A child tapping a touchscreen to match shapes is not learning the same thing as a child building with wooden blocks. The physical, three-dimensional manipulation of real objects produces qualitatively different learning that no screen replicates.
The harm is not from screens themselves but from what they replace. The more screen time a child has, the less time they have for interactions that build a developing brain.
The research does not support this claim. Studies consistently show young children learn better from live interaction with a responsive adult than from any app, regardless of how educational it claims to be.
Kawa Early Years in Nallagandla, Hyderabad is entirely screen-free, every environment, every moment. See what a screen-free day at Kawa looks like.
Accepting enquiries for our October 2026 inaugural cohort in Nallagandla, Hyderabad.