The short answer is none, but the reasons why are fascinating, and the alternatives are simpler than you might think.
If your six-month-old has caught a glimpse of a television, a phone screen, or a tablet, please set aside any worry right now. The question of how much screen time is appropriate at this age has a clear, research-backed answer: the UK Chief Medical Officers recommend no screen time at all for babies under two, beyond video calls with family. That is the guideline. It is not a judgement about any individual moment of parenting; it is a statement about what a young brain needs during one of the most extraordinary developmental windows in human life. Knowing the reasoning behind it turns an instruction into something far more useful, an invitation to understand your baby.
The guidance exists because a six-month-old's brain is not yet equipped to extract meaning from a flat, moving image. Research by Kuhl and Meltzoff demonstrated that infants learn language and social cues through live, contingent interaction, the kind where your face responds to theirs in real time. A screen cannot do that. It produces what researchers call a "video deficit": babies under two simply do not learn from screens the way they learn from people. At six months, your baby is building the very foundations of language, attention, and emotional regulation, and every one of those foundations is laid through you.
What the UK Chief Medical Officers say
The UK CMO guidelines advise that children under two should have no sedentary screen time, with the sole exception of video calls. The guidance emphasises that time spent with screens displaces the active, interactive, and physical experiences that support healthy development in the earliest years.
The World Health Organization published its guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep for children under five in 2019, and the message for babies under one is unambiguous: sedentary screen time is not recommended. The WHO frames this not as a prohibition but as a positive argument. The hours that might be spent in front of a screen are hours that could be spent moving, being held, being talked to, and exploring the physical world. These are not equivalent uses of time for a developing nervous system.
The science that supports these recommendations draws on decades of developmental research. Gopnik's work on the "lantern consciousness" of infancy describes how young babies attend to everything in their environment with a diffuse, absorptive awareness quite different from adult focus. A screen, with its rapid cuts and artificial brightness, competes aggressively for that attention without offering the back-and-forth that teaches a baby anything lasting. Christakis has shown that background television alone reduces the quantity and quality of parent-child verbal interaction, which matters enormously at a stage when Hart and Risley's landmark research identified early language exposure as one of the strongest predictors of later vocabulary and school readiness.
At six months, synaptic density in the infant brain is near its peak. The brain is forming connections at a rate that will never be matched again, pruning and strengthening pathways in direct response to what the baby experiences. Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development reminds us that learning at this age happens in relationship, through gentle challenge offered by a more capable partner. A screen offers no such partnership. It neither reads your baby's cues nor adjusts its pace to meet them.
Diamond's research on executive function shows that the prefrontal cortex, responsible for attention regulation and impulse control, is shaped profoundly by early experience. Passive screen exposure at this age does not build those pathways; it occupies the time that would otherwise be spent building them through play and conversation. The concern is not that screens cause harm in some dramatic sense, but that they quietly displace the experiences that matter most.
The video deficit in brief
Kuhl and Meltzoff's research found that babies learn speech sounds far more effectively from a live person than from the same person on video. At six months, this "video deficit" is at its strongest. The contingent, responsive quality of a real human face and voice is something no screen can replicate.
A six-month-old is beginning to reach deliberately, transfer objects between hands, and understand that their actions produce effects. Piaget described this as the sensorimotor stage, a period defined by learning through doing and touching rather than watching. What your baby craves, developmentally speaking, is objects they can grip, mouth, shake, and bang; surfaces with different textures; faces that respond; and voices that rise and fall in the musical patterns that Suskind's work identifies as the building blocks of language acquisition.
Cause-and-effect is particularly compelling at this age. A toy that rattles when shaken, stacks when balanced, or rolls when pushed teaches something profound: that the world responds to the baby's intentions. This is the beginning of agency, self-efficacy, and curiosity, all of which Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff identify as core components of school readiness that are built through play, not instruction.
Suskind's research on early language exposure underlines what Hart and Risley first observed: the sheer quantity of words a child hears in the first three years shapes their cognitive trajectory. At six months, every nappy change narrated, every spoonful of food described, every toy named and handed over is a neural investment. You do not need a curriculum or a screen-based programme. You need to keep talking, keep responding, keep playing.
Berk's work on private speech and Vygotsky's scaffolding both point to the same truth: learning at this age is fundamentally social. The caregiver is not delivering information to a passive recipient; they are co-constructing understanding through interaction. Your baby watches your eyes to learn where to look. Your tone teaches them about emotion. Your consistency teaches them about safety. None of that fits on a screen.
The best toys for a six-month-old are not complex. They should be graspable, safe to mouth, varied in texture and weight, and ideally open-ended enough to grow with the child. Well-made wooden toys carry an intrinsic warmth and weight that plastic equivalents rarely match, and they invite a slower, more attentive kind of play.
Jaques of London, established in 1795 and the world's oldest games company, has always understood that the best play objects are honest ones: real materials, genuine craft, no batteries required. A simple wooden rattle, a set of stacking rings, or a grasping ball offers a six-month-old everything they need. Sensory feedback, cause-and-effect discovery, and an object worthy of their extraordinary attention.
It is worth saying plainly: the research does not ask you to be a perfect, ever-present, endlessly stimulating caregiver. Ginsburg, writing for the American Academy of Pediatrics, is emphatic that unstructured play, including time when a baby simply explores a safe space independently, is as valuable as directed interaction. You are allowed to put your baby on a mat with a wooden toy and make a cup of tea. That counts. Rest counts. Ordinary domestic life, narrated aloud, counts enormously.
The guidelines about screens exist not to create anxiety but to protect the spaces in which ordinary, human, imperfect parenting can do its remarkable work. Your voice, your face, your hands, a handful of honest toys: this is genuinely enough.
A note from the AAP
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends avoiding screen media other than video chatting for children younger than 18 to 24 months, and emphasises that the most important factor in early development is the quality of caregiver interaction, not the presence or absence of any particular toy or tool.
Yes, and it matters more than many parents realise. Christakis's research found that background television significantly reduces the amount of parent-child conversation and interaction, even when neither parent nor child is actively watching. At six months, a baby's gaze is drawn to the movement and contrast of a screen almost reflexively. Turning the television off during waking and play time is one of the simplest changes a family can make, and the evidence suggests it has a measurable impact on early language development.
No, and both the UK CMO guidelines and the WHO make this distinction explicitly. A video call with a familiar, responsive person is contingent interaction: the face on screen reacts to your baby, uses their name, and responds to their sounds and expressions. Kuhl and Meltzoff's research suggests that live contingency is the critical ingredient for learning. A video call with a grandparent who is genuinely interacting with your baby is a world apart from a cartoon or a video clip, and it is warmly encouraged.
The word "educational" on an app aimed at babies under one is not supported by the evidence. Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff have written extensively about the gap between what apps claim and what developmental research demonstrates. For a six-month-old, no app can replicate the responsive, two-way interaction that actually drives learning. Radesky's research on digital media and infant development found that app-based play tends to reduce caregiver vocalisation and responsiveness, the very things that matter most. The concern is less about any direct harm from the app itself, and more about what it displaces.
At six months, the ideal toy is small enough to grip in one hand, safe to mouth, varied in texture, and rewarding to shake or bang. Wooden rattles, simple stacking rings, and lightweight grasping balls all fit the brief. The key is open-ended simplicity: a toy that does one or two honest things well will hold a six-month-old's attention far longer than something with flashing lights, because the baby's own actions become the source of interest. The Jaques wooden toys collection includes pieces chosen for exactly this stage, natural materials, considered weight, and no requirement for batteries or a screen.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.