Screen Time Guidance for Ages 5 to 16 Is Coming: What the Government Announced

Published 10 June 2026. Every fact in this post was checked against GOV.UK and the Department for Education on the day of publication. This is general information, not medical or legal advice.

If your child is past the toddler years, you may have noticed that all the official screen time advice seems to stop at age five. The new government guidance published this spring only covers under-fives, and parents of older children have been left guessing. That is finally changing.

On 8 June 2026, the government announced that official screen use guidance for children aged 5 to 16 is on the way. Here is what was actually said, what it will and will not do, and what you can usefully do while we wait.

What was announced

The Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed that new guidance on screen use for school-aged children and teenagers will be published in autumn 2026. Before that, there is a short call for evidence, so the guidance will be shaped by research and by real families rather than written in a vacuum.

The work is being led by an expert group co-chaired by two names you may recognise from the under-fives guidance: Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza and Professor Russell Viner, a paediatrician who specialises in adolescent health. You can read the official announcement on GOV.UK.

What it will cover

According to the announcement, the guidance will tackle the things parents actually worry about: scrolling, social media, sleep, and how screens affect learning. The government has been clear about the approach it is taking:

• No blanket rules. Ministers have said the guidance will not impose rigid screen time limits. The aim is to help families make informed choices that fit their own children.
• Evidence first. The recommendations will follow a call for evidence and review of the research, in the same way the under-fives guidance was built.
• SEND is recognised. The announcement explicitly acknowledges that technology can be genuinely valuable for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and the guidance is expected to reflect that rather than treat all screen use as equal.

What is already in force

While the 5 to 16 guidance is still being written, two things are already real:

• Phone-free classrooms are a legal requirement in England, so the school day is already covered.
• The under-fives guidance is live now. If you also have a little one, the official advice was published in spring 2026 and is summarised on the DfE Education Hub. We cover it in plain English in our guide to the UK screen time guidance.

What this means for your family right now

Honestly? Nothing changes overnight, and that is fine. The most useful thing you can take from this announcement is its tone: the government’s own experts are not going to hand you a magic daily minutes number, because the evidence does not support one. What matters is what screens displace (sleep, movement, conversation) and what your child is actually doing on them.

While we wait for the autumn guidance, the approach we have always taken here still stands:

• Protect sleep first. Screens out of the bedroom and a proper wind-down beats any daily limit.
• Watch what they watch, sometimes. Co-viewing turns passive scrolling into conversation.
• Have the boundary conversation before the meltdown, not during it. A calm-down corner helps with the after-effects, but clear expectations help more.

When to expect the guidance

Autumn 2026 is the stated target. We will read the full document the day it lands, check it against the announcement, and update this post with what it actually says. If you want that update in your inbox, the newsletter signup below is the easiest way.

Sources

• GOV.UK: New guidance on screen use for children aged 5 to 16 (8 June 2026)
• DfE Education Hub: New advice for parents on screen time for young children