The research, led by Henna Launistola of the Folkhälsan Research Center and the University of Helsinki, drew on data from 673 Finnish families with children aged three to six years. The families were participating in the DAGIS intervention study, a clustered randomized controlled trial based in two municipalities in southern Finland that aims to promote healthy eating, physical activity, self-regulation skills and lower screen use among preschoolers. Parents completed a survey asking how often during the previous month their child had visited nature or forest, their own yard, and a park or playground together with at least one adult in the family. Crucially, parents also kept a seven-day screen time diary, recording every stretch of ten minutes or more that their child spent watching television or videos or using tablets, smartphones, computers or game consoles outside early childhood education hours.

The diary approach is one of the study’s technical strengths. Rather than relying on a single retrospective question, which is vulnerable to recall bias, parents logged screen activities day by day, and the researchers calculated average weekday, weekend day and weighted whole-week screen time in minutes. A child’s data were included only if the diary covered at least three weekdays and one weekend day. On average, the preschoolers accumulated 70 minutes of screen time per weekday, 125 minutes per weekend day, and 86 minutes per day across the whole week. That weekend figure, more than an hour higher than the weekday average, immediately signals that weekends are where the battle against excessive screen use is most likely to be lost or won.

The outdoor visit data revealed a striking pattern in their own right. Forty-four percent of families reported visiting their own yard daily, making it by far the most frequented outdoor space. Nature and playgrounds were far less central to family routines: 37 percent of families visited nature only one to three times a month, 35 percent visited playgrounds at that low frequency, and 17 percent had not taken their child to a park or playground at all during the entire month. These frequencies were recoded into continuous weekly values and analyzed using multiple multivariate linear regression, with screen time as the dependent variable and visit frequencies as independent variables, adjusted in successive models for the child’s age and sex, then additionally for parental education, relative household income and season.

The fully adjusted results told a nuanced story. On weekdays, more frequent visits to the family’s own yard were associated with lower child screen time, with each step up in visit frequency corresponding to roughly two fewer minutes per day. Nature visits showed a similar weekday effect, at about 2.3 minutes less screen time per frequency increment. Playgrounds, however, lost their weekday significance once socioeconomic factors and season were accounted for. On weekends the pattern flipped: playground visit frequency was the only context-specific measure that remained significantly associated with lower weekend screen time, at nearly 3.7 minutes less per increment, while yard and nature visits showed no weekend effect. Across the entire week, all three outdoor spaces and the total visit frequency were linked to less screen time, with total outdoor visits showing consistent negative associations on weekdays, weekends and the whole week alike.

Why would the yard and the forest matter on Tuesdays but the playground matter on Saturdays? The authors offer several plausible mechanisms. The own yard is close to home, private, safe and familiar, which may ease the parental safety concerns that are a well-documented barrier to young children’s outdoor play. In Finland, most houses and condominiums have their own yard, often equipped with swings and climbing apparatus, making it a feasible destination even during the compressed routines of a working weekday. Nature, meanwhile, is remarkably accessible in Finland: half of the population lives only 300 meters from the nearest forest, and the traditional right of everyman allows access to natural areas without the landowner’s permission. Both spaces, the researchers suggest, may simply compete more directly with screens during the busy weekday hours between daycare and bedtime.

Weekends, by contrast, offer families abundant unstructured leisure time, and children typically spend more of it in front of screens. The finding that playground visits were linked to lower weekend screen time echoes an earlier American study of low-income families, in which more frequent weekend park visits were associated with less television viewing among two- to four-year-olds. The Finnish authors also note a measurement caveat: in the Finnish language, the terms for park and playground overlap considerably, and the questionnaire item combined them, which may have led to varied interpretations among respondents. They further acknowledge that playgrounds were visited relatively seldom in their sample, and that access may have been uneven because the data were collected in communities that include rural areas where public playground density is lower than in cities.

The study’s authors are careful about what the data cannot show. As a cross-sectional analysis, it captures associations at a single point in time and cannot establish whether outdoor visits reduce screen time or whether screen-heavy families simply venture out less. The data are parent-reported, opening the door to social desirability bias, and the screen time diary, while reducing recall bias, may have produced some overreporting because device-specific times were summed. The data were also collected in autumn 2017, seven to eight years before publication, and children’s screen habits have likely shifted since. The effect sizes, the authors concede, are modest, and factors not controlled in the analysis, such as parental screen use, household screen rules and perceived barriers to outdoor play, may exert a larger influence on children’s screen time than outdoor visits do. Still, from a public health perspective, even small associations contribute to the overall picture of what shapes young children’s behavior.

What elevates this study above much of the existing literature is its context-specific design. Previous research has yielded mixed results: a Canadian study found no association between outdoor time and screen time in three- to six-year-olds, and two other studies reported no link between preschoolers’ outdoor play and television viewing, while an Indian study of children aged three to fifteen found that a lack of outdoor play was associated with excessive screen use exceeding two hours per day. Longitudinal work has been more encouraging, with early childhood outdoor play predicting less computer use and gaming later in childhood, and high screen time at ages three to four predicting less outdoor play at ages ten to eleven. By measuring actual visits to distinct outdoor settings rather than merely the availability of green space, and by separating weekdays from weekends, the Finnish team has added a layer of granularity that earlier studies lacked.

The practical implications reach well beyond individual households. The authors argue that municipalities should ensure a variety of outdoor spaces, both built and unbuilt, public and private, are available within feasible distance of residential neighborhoods, so that families from all socioeconomic backgrounds have genuine alternatives to screens. For parents, the message is to make frequent visits to whichever outdoor spaces they prefer, since total visit frequency was consistently associated with lower screen time throughout the week. For urban planners and policymakers grappling with rising urbanization, the findings suggest that preserving yards, forests and playgrounds within walking distance of homes is not merely an aesthetic luxury but a measurable component of children’s healthy development. Future longitudinal and intervention studies, the researchers emphasize, will be needed to establish whether the relationship is causal, and more detailed measurement of visit duration, timing and activity type could clarify exactly which kinds of outdoor excursions best compete with the glowing rectangles that increasingly fill young children’s days.

Subject of Research: Associations between parent-child outdoor visits to nature, own yards and playgrounds and screen time in preschool-aged children

Article Title: Associations between parent–child outdoor visits and preschool-aged children’s screen time: a cross-sectional study

Article References: Launistola, H., Lehto, R., Engberg, E., Björkqvist, J., Rahkola, J., Simonsen, N., Wackström, N., Tilli, E., Roos, E., & Ray, C. (2025). Associations between parent–child outdoor visits and preschool-aged children’s screen time: a cross-sectional study. Journal of Activity, Sedentary and Sleep Behaviors, 4(1), Article 18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44167-025-00089-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44167-025-00089-5

Keywords: preschool children, screen time, outdoor play, nature visits, playgrounds, own yard, parent-child activities, sedentary behavior, child health, Finland, DAGIS study, urban planning