We send our kids 3 days a week and would probably do it even if we weren’t both working.
Room for a variety of opinions here, agree one size does not fit all.
Wow, no surprise there. I'm sure you recognize how privileged you and your children are to be able to grow up this way.
One size fits all advice is necessary because it is not economically feasible to provide individual expert advice to every single person. Many people unfortunately use a phone/tablet as a cheaper form of child care ignoring the child as long as they are quite and entertained.
But yes, you are right that it is a great privilege to have a lot of parent time available.
The sadder one to me is the folks who don’t take advantage of their available time. I know quite a few parents who are either not working or wealthy enough to not work for several years with no significant financial/career impact but who still hire someone else to take care of their kids full time, because they think of childcare as an annoying hassle.
My 2.5 year old doesn’t get too much screen time (occasional movies or Mr Rogers episodes), but more because I haven’t spent any time investigating the possibilities than because we have a strong philosophical objection to it.
I’m not too sold on the terrifying stories though.
Heck I bet shipping your child off to daycare every day hinders them more than 90 minutes of tablet time. Particularly in a household of two full time stay at home parents and every conceivable monetary and educational advantage they could want for. But I doubt the AAP goes telling everyone that they're doing it wrong if they pay others to raise their kids each day.
Sorry... I'm ranting. I just don't like highly distilled parental advice from organizations. One size fits all culture we have here in the west, I think, is very harmful.