Current pedagogical advise is to keep children under 2 away from screens, period. Presumably because they are much more affected by them.

Does you kid gain access to a screen accidentally or is it something you employ as an emergency pacifier on rare occasions?

Accidentally for sure. He is only 18 months old! We don’t even have a TV.

What is it about his relationships with books that is more "engaged" and thus better?

Each kid is different, it seems yours has a particular thing going on (with ipads or phones I guess ?)

Did you find what’s sucking him into these apps ? At 1.5 yo it can be super interesting to understand what makes him focus and direct his learning.

For ours it was simply things that move that he can’t touch (no texture, no tactile feedback), and it was new enough to him that he stuck with learning numbers and letters shapes just to keep using the ipad.

Screen time is an issue for us and our 5 year old, but "war on screens" is crap from outrage culture.

Similarly, when I'm in "the zone" and someone interrupts me, I'm actually a bit disgruntled.

When everything is new in the world, I'm sure they're feeling the "zone" moment too of absorbing new information.

I don't think tablets are the issue - curation of content is.

> is much more engaged with them

What do you mean? Isn't he just reading them?

I doubt it, he's 1.5 years old.