WACO, TX — A new study from Baylor University’s Department of Family and Consumer Sciences has found that the average American toddler logs 4.7 hours of daily screen time, a figure that now eclipses the 3.2 hours the average seminary student spends in prayer and devotion per week.

Researchers said they initially flagged the data as a processing error before realizing it was, in the words of lead author Dr. Christine Yeoh, “just deeply, numerically accurate.”

The study, titled “Luminous Rectangles: Screen Engagement in Pre-Verbal Americans,” surveyed 2,400 households and cross-referenced the data with self-reported spiritual disciplines from students at six accredited seminaries across the South.

“We are asking our seminary students to, at minimum, match the spiritual intensity of a two-year-old watching Bluey. That should not be a controversial benchmark.”

Dr. Alan Marsh, dean of Truett Theological Seminary, issued the above statement Monday morning, adding that the school would begin requiring students to log devotional hours in a shared app “so we can at least see where we stand relative to the toddler population.”

Parent Sarah Dunning, 34, of McKinney, Texas, pushed back on the study’s implications, arguing that “at least half of that screen time is Veggie Tales, which absolutely counts as discipleship.” She added that her son can sing “God Is Bigger Than the Boogie Man” from memory, “which is more than I can say for most deacons.”

One seminarian, who asked to remain anonymous, admitted that his prayer time had been “displaced by a word puzzle game” that he described as “basically meditation, if you think about it.”

At press time, a three-year-old in the study had independently downloaded a Bible app and outpaced her father’s quarterly reading plan in a single afternoon.