Merlin is the gold standard for what 'good' screen time looks like. It’s a utility, not a distraction. Instead of sucking a kid into a digital world, it uses the digital world to illuminate the physical one. It’s one of the few apps that actually makes a family walk more interesting rather than more annoying.

The tech is genuinely impressive—the machine learning behind the sound and photo identification feels like a superpower. If you’re trying to justify having a smartphone in your kid’s hand while you’re outside, this is the app that wins that argument every single time.