As many of you know from my most recent parenting book, Raising Generation Tech: Prepare Your Children for a Media-fueled World, I’m not a big fan of screen time by children. In recent years, I’ve gotten push back from parents who say that their children learn a lot from so-called educational” media, whether TV shows, videos, or apps, and that most of their children’s time is spent with educational media.

Well, a recent study has debunked that assertion by demonstrating that less than half the time that children ages 2-10 spend watching media is educational (as identified by parents of those children). Moreover, the amount of educational use of media drops off after eight years old. In other words, though there may or may not be educational media available to children, most of them are not using it.

I have serious questions about whether media that calls itself educational is, in fact, educational. Rarely is there actual research evidence supporting the claims. Given the amount of time that children these days spend in front of screens, I would suggest that the best educational content can be found away screens.

At the very least, I ask parents to maintain a healthy level of skepticism any time they hear how much children can learn from the use of various forms of media. The chances are that the companies making these claims are more interested in making a buck than in educating your children.