FaceTime is not bad for babies. It is the one clear exception that both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization carve out from their otherwise strict “no screens before 18 months” guidelines. Unlike passive video, a live video call preserves the back-and-forth interaction that young brains need, making it closer to a real conversation than to watching television.
That said, there are real differences between a video chat and a face-to-face interaction, and how you handle the call matters more than whether you make it.
Why Video Chat Gets a Pass
The AAP has reassured parents since 2016 that video chatting with family should not be counted as “screen time.” In the AAP’s framing, it’s “relationship time.” The WHO recommends zero screen time for infants under one year, yet its guidance targets sedentary, passive viewing rather than live two-way interaction. Mount Sinai’s pediatric guidelines echo this distinction, listing video chatting with family as the sole exception for children under 18 months.
The reason comes down to something researchers call social contingency: a live person on screen responds to what your baby does in real time. A recorded video does not. In a study of children aged 12 to 25 months, those who had real-time FaceTime conversations with an on-screen partner responded in a temporally synced way, recognized that partner a week later, learned more visual patterns, and (among the oldest toddlers) picked up more new words. Children who watched pre-recorded videos of the same partner doing the same things showed none of those gains. The back-and-forth is the ingredient that makes the difference.
What Babies Actually Get From a Video Call
Babies don’t fully understand what they’re seeing on a screen until around 18 to 24 months, when toddlers start to grasp that the image represents something real. Before that age, they still respond to familiar voices, facial expressions, and emotional tone. Research during the COVID-19 pandemic found that infant mood during video calls with grandparents was predicted by how sensitively the grandparent interacted, not by whether the interaction was on screen or in person. In other words, a warm, engaged relative on FaceTime produced the same positive emotional response in the baby as that relative sitting in the room.
There’s also evidence that the quality of interaction between parent and child during screen use dramatically shapes learning. Infants were 19 times more likely to successfully transfer what they learned from a screen to a real object when they were part of a high-quality interactive exchange with a caregiver during the activity. Your narration, pointing, and enthusiasm during a video call aren’t just nice extras. They’re the mechanism that helps your baby’s brain connect the flat image to the real world.
How It Differs From Passive Screen Time
The contrast between video chat and passive viewing is stark. Babies and toddlers consistently learn less from watching a screen than from a live demonstration, a phenomenon called the video deficit effect. This gap peaks around 15 months and persists until about 30 months. It takes roughly twice as many demonstrations for a 12-month-old to imitate an action seen on a screen compared to the same action shown in person.
Passive screen time carries measurable risks that video chatting does not share. Six-month-olds exposed to an average of two hours of television per day showed lower cognitive and language scores by 14 months compared to unexposed children. Two hours of daily TV between 15 and 48 months quadrupled the probability of a language delay, and that risk jumped to six times higher when television exposure began before 12 months. Background television also fragments play: studies show shorter play episodes, shorter stretches of focused attention, and less complex solo play when a TV is on in the room, even if the child isn’t watching it directly.
FaceTime doesn’t carry these same risks because it isn’t a one-way stream of stimulation. It’s a conversation, even if your baby’s side of that conversation is mostly babbling, smiling, or banging a toy on the highchair tray.
Keeping Calls Comfortable for Little Eyes
Prolonged close-up focus on any screen can strain developing eyes. When children spend extended time focused on nearby objects, their eyes work harder, and sustained near work may contribute to eyeball elongation over time, a precursor to nearsightedness. For a short FaceTime call with grandma, this is not a serious concern, but a few simple habits help:
- Keep the screen at least 12 inches from your baby’s face. Propping a tablet on a table rather than holding a phone right in front of them makes this easy.
- Keep calls reasonably short. Most babies naturally lose interest quickly. Research shows infants only look at the screen for about 41% of a video chat anyway, so there’s no need to force sustained attention.
- Watch for signs of overstimulation. Fussiness, looking away repeatedly, or rubbing eyes are your baby’s way of saying they’re done.
Making Video Calls More Engaging
Because babies under 18 months don’t yet understand that the person on screen is “real,” they need help bridging that gap. The AAP suggests guiding your child’s attention during the call with simple narration: “Look, Daddy is waving!” or “Can you see the funny face Grandma is making?” This kind of verbal scaffolding gives your baby context for what they’re seeing and keeps the interaction feeling social rather than passive.
Let the person on screen talk directly to your baby, use exaggerated expressions, sing songs, or play peekaboo. These are the same things that make in-person interaction rich for infant development, and they translate well to video. If your baby loses interest and crawls away after three minutes, that’s completely fine. Short, warm, interactive calls are more valuable than long ones where the baby is propped in front of a screen while adults talk to each other.
For relatives who live far away, regular short video calls can genuinely help your baby build familiarity. Children in the FaceTime condition of one study recognized and preferred their on-screen partner after just one week, suggesting that even brief but consistent live video exposure helps babies form social connections with people they can’t see in person.