On the occasion of International Education Day, the World Bank Group is pleased to invite you to the launch of the report “Screen Time in Early Childhood Education: Balancing the Digital Scale,” followed by a panel discussion with international experts entitled “Who Is Raising Our Children? How Digital Time Influences Learning, Play, and Growth.

 

Explore the report, understand how excessive exposure to digital devices affects early childhood, and examine key guidance for promoting healthy and balanced use of technology. In addition, discover innovative strategies and insights from international experts on how to equip children, from the earliest years, to integrate digital tools responsibly and positively throughout their educational journey.

 

Report Overview

Over the past decade, the touchscreen has become the default digital babysitter for millions of children under five around the world. Since 2012, the share of households with an internet-connected mobile device has more than doubled in both OECD countries and upper-middle-income countries (OECD, 2019), turning every living room, bus row, and waiting room into a potential media hub.

Currently, the average preschooler spends about two hours a day in front of a screen—double the one-hour limit set by the World Health Organization for children aged 2 to 5 (WHO, 2019).

 

How does screen exposure affect early development?

  • Excessive exposure at early ages is linked to slower language growth.
  • Loss of attention and concentration abilities.
  • Weak skills for socializing and interacting with others.
  • Reduced motor coordination.
  • Changes in sleep patterns.

 

The report provides recommendations to support children’s development, including: (1) greater parental engagement, with practical exercises to identify habits, plan activities, and support their implementation; (2) accessible activities that offer appealing alternatives to screen use, such as play, dialogic reading, and community-based resources; (3) guidance on setting limits through family agreements, technology-free times and spaces, and age-appropriate monitoring tools; and (4) modeling positive digital behaviors and fostering parent networks to promote healthier digital norms.

 

The goal is to equip children and young people from an early age with the foundations needed for their full educational trajectory, enabling them—over time—to enter the workforce with the knowledge and skills required to succeed.

Jaime Saavedra

Jaime Saavedra - Director of Human Development for Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Bank

 

Jaime Saavedra is the Director of Human Development for Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Bank. Previously, he led the institution's Global Education Practice.

 

Between 2013 and 2016 he served as Minister of Education of Peru. During his tenure, he promoted a teachers’ career reform, an expansion of full-time secondary, and a bold university reform. The performance of Peru’s education system improved substantially as measured by international learning assessments.

 

Prior to assuming this role, he was Global Director for Poverty Reduction and Equity and Acting Vice-President of Poverty Reduction and Economic Management at the World Bank, where he co-led the establishment of the twin goals of Eliminating Extreme Poverty and pursuing Shared Prosperity, which continues guiding the work of the institution.

 

Throughout his career, Dr. Saavedra, a Peruvian national, has led groundbreaking work in the areas of poverty and inequality, labor markets, the economics of education, and the use of data and evidence in public policy. He has held positions at the Inter-American Development Bank, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the International Labor Organization, LACEA, and the National Council of Labor in Peru.  He has been the Executive Director of Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE), a leading think tank in Peru.

 

He has also held teaching positions and Universidad Católica of Peru, and the University of Toronto. He is currently a board member of Teach for All, the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel, and the High-Level Council on Leadership & Management for Development of the Aspen Institute. Dr. Saavedra holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Catholic University of Peru.

 

 

The World Bank

Carolina Piñeros - Director of Red PaPaz, Colombia

 

Colombian, married and mother of three adult children. Industrial Engineer with a specialization in personal and family development. Co-founder of Red PaPaz in 2003. Since April 2004 it has been dedicated to its Executive Directorate. This organization advocates for the protection of the rights of children and adolescents, and has made progress in important legislation and evidence-based programs. In addition, he has been a member of several boards of directors and educational and social initiatives.

 

 

The World Bank

Michel Kerf - Regional Director for Digital Transformation, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and Central Asia

 

Michel Kerf is the Regional Director for Digital Transformation for the Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe and Central Asia regions. 

 

Prior to this position, he served as Division Director for Central America and the Dominican Republic, leading a portfolio of 62 projects totaling US$7.6 billion.

 

Michel Kerf brings more than 25 years of World Bank experience to his new role, having held positions as Country Director for Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands and as Transport Practice Manager for East Asia and the Pacific.

 

Michel Kerf also served as Sector Manager for Sustainable Development for Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Pacific Islands; leader of the Sustainable Development sector in Peru and Argentina; Infrastructure Policy Advisor in the Sustainable Development Department of the East Asia and Pacific Region and Senior Private Sector Development Specialist in the Middle East and North Africa Region.

 

Michel, a Belgian national, holds a law degree from the University of Liège, Belgium, and a Master's degree in economics from the London School of Economics. He taught as a visiting professor at the University of Liège and at the College of Europe in Bruges. He is also the author of several publications on issues related to concessions, privatization and competitiveness of infrastructure services.

 

 

The World Bank

Florencia López Boo -  Director of Global TIES for Children, NYU 

 

She earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). She is currently a Professor of Economics and Applied Psychology at New York University (NYU) and Director of the Global TIES for Children Center. Prior to joining NYU, she worked as an economist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for 15 years, where she coordinated the early childhood agenda, an early childhood innovation fund, her division’s knowledge agenda, and an initiative on behavioral economics and social policies.

 

Her work focuses on the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of public policies related to child development and social protection in Latin America. She is the founder and former president of the LACEA-BRAIN network and has served as the lead advisor on child development for G20 meetings. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals such as *The Lancet*, *Journal of Human Resources*, *Pediatrics*, *Journal of Development Economics*, and *Journal of Public Economics*. She is also the author and co-author of several books on behavioral sciences, education, and child development in Latin America and the Caribbean, and a member of several global expert committees.

 

 

The World Bank

Claudia Lagos Serrano - Undersecretary arly Childhood Education, Chile 

 

She holds a degree in Early Childhood Education from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a PhD in Education from ORT University of Uruguay. She has worked as a classroom teacher and cycle coordinator. In addition, she has extensive experience as an academic, serving as a researcher, degree program director at leading Chilean universities, and as coordinator of teacher training at the Center for Advanced Training, Experimentation, and Pedagogical Research (CPEIP) of the Ministry of Education.

 

Between April and September 2022, she served as Executive Director of Fundación Integra. In September 2022, she assumed the position of Undersecretary of Early Childhood Education.

 

 

The World Bank

Ezequiel Molina - Senior Economist in the Global Practice for Education in Latin America at the World Bank

 

Ezequiel Molina is a Senior Economist in the Global Practice for Education in Latin America at the World Bank, where he serves as the regional focal point for Teachers and Educational Technology (EdTech). He pioneered two flagship World Bank programs: Teach, a classroom observation tool designed to help countries track and improve teaching quality in primary, early childhood, and secondary education settings. He also spearheaded Coach, the World Bank's global initiative that helps countries improve in-service teacher professional development systems to accelerate learning. As an AI Champion, he guides World Bank staff in integrating artificial intelligence tools into their work and leads pilots exploring AI applications in education.

 

At the intersection of research and practice, his work addresses critical challenges in global education. His publications in the  Journal of Economic Perspectives and other leading journals examine teacher effectiveness and education service delivery in low- and middle-income countries. Through field research spanning Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and South Asia, he has contributed to advancing measurement tools and evidence-based approaches in education, with recent innovations being tested in Chile and Peru.

 

Before his current role, he served as a Senior Economist in the Global Knowledge and Innovation Unit at the Education Global Practice and as a Global Lead for the World Bank's Teachers Thematic Group. His earlier work in the Africa HD Economic Unit, Poverty GP, and Governance GP culminated in significant contributions to the World Development Report 2017 on Governance and the Law, shaping policy discourse on institutional reform and development.

 

Throughout his career, Ezequiel has combined rigorous academic research with practical policy implementation. His work on Teach and Coach has been particularly influential in helping countries shift toward evidence-based teacher professional development systems that incorporate insights from adult learning and behavioral science. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Economy from Princeton University and both a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from La Plata National University in Argentina.

 

 

The World Bank

 

Cristóbal Cobo - Senior Education Specialist at the World Bank

Cristóbal Cobo is a Senior Education Specialist at the World Bank, focusing on the effective and appropriate use of new technologies in education in middle- and low-income countries and emerging markets around the world. Since joining the World Bank in 2019, he has worked in the Education Global Practice and is currently focused on the Europe and Central Asia region. Dr. Cobo spent 20 years working at the intersection of future of learning, cultures of innovation and human-centered technologies across both developed and developing countries. 

 

From 2014-2019, Dr. Cobo served as founding Director of the Center for Research at the Ceibal Foundation in Uruguay, leading initiatives to learn from one of the world’s most notable examples of the use of educational technologies at scale across an entire education system, Plan Ceibal. Created in 2007, the pioneering Plan Ceibal has provided all students in public education with a free computer and connected all public schools to the Internet, part of a larger national effort to support greater inclusion and equal opportunities within the education system. 

 

Before joining the Center for Research at the Ceibal Foundation, Cristóbal spent five years as an associate researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford (UK). Prior to that, Dr. Cobo was professor and director of communications at the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO) in Mexico from 2005 to 2010. A well-known speaker on topics related to the use of new technologies in education around the world, Cristóbal has provided keynote addresses in over 30 countries and spoken at four TEDx events.

 

He has also served as a consultant for a number of national education programs across Latin America, most notably Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Argentina. He has published four books and over 80 academic articles; his most recent publication is I accept the terms and conditions: Uses and abuses of digital technologies (2019).

 

A native of Chile, Cristóbal received his Ph.D. in human-computer interaction from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. 

Date: January 23, 2026

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM ET

Virtual:

Register here