Should you let young kids watch the World Series?

AT THIS TIME of year, nearly every morning before dawn, my 2.5-year-old wakes up, calls me into his room and looks up into my bleary eyes to ask: “Watch baseball?”

- DREW TEWKSBURY GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

He wants to watch highlights from yesterday’s games before he goes to day care. After school, he likes to get a quesadilla at a place where we can watch the superheroes Mookie Betts, Kiké Hernández and his idol Shohei Ohtani perform miracles on the field.

My toddler is a total baseball fanatic, and as the Dodgers are back in the World Series, I've been wondering whether letting him watch those long games on screens will shrivel his brain like so many parenting TikToks say.

I know those aren't good sources, so I reached out to experts.

First: Emily Oster, the economist turned parenting sage whose advice is grounded in data. Her books and site, ParentData, provided clarity on many issues before and after my son’s arrival. Could she tell me whether watching sports counts as bad screen time?

“I do not support thinking screen time being good or bad; it’s an unhelpful frame for most parents,” said Oster, deflating my theory a bit. “Instead, we want to think about screen time with the frame of opportunity cost: What would my child be doing other than this?”

She says that caretakers should be mindful of whether screen time is interfering with social activities, rest or other developmental needs: “If your kid is watching nine hours of ‘Cocomelon’ per day, they do not have time for other things: eating, sleeping, and going to school. And that’s a problem. But an hour of TV while you make dinner? That’s a good way for everyone to have a break.”