What should I actually look at?
- Does it end? A session with a defined finish is a task. One that always offers a next thing is engineered for duration, whatever it teaches.
- What does it do when a child stops? Streak guilt, notifications and lost currency are retention mechanics, and they work on children more strongly than on adults.
- Is there advertising? An ad-funded children’s app is monetising attention, and attention is the thing you are trying to spend carefully.
- Is anything public? Leaderboards and profiles introduce social comparison into a context that does not need it.
How much is reasonable at this age?
Canadian paediatric guidance for school-age children emphasises consistent limits, no screens before sleep, and screen time not displacing physical activity, sleep or reading — rather than one universal number of minutes. Twenty minutes of finite academic practice fits comfortably inside any sensible version of that.
What does Daily Academy do about it?
The daily mission is five stops and roughly twenty minutes, and it ends. There is no advertising, no public leaderboard, no profile visible to anyone outside the family, and no analytics shown to the child. Missing a day breaks a streak and costs nothing else. The footer signature is the design brief: twenty minutes, then the day is yours.