How to set screen time rules your kids will actually keep

A rule your child helped write is one they can explain back to you, and a rule they can explain is one they mostly keep. A rule announced at them is one they will test, because testing is the only way to find out where it really is.

At every age, keep the list short. Five rules that everyone can recite are worth more than a page nobody reads again. How much say a child gets in writing them depends on age:

1. Under about seven: you decide, and you explain in one sentence. Keep it to two or three rules about places and routines, such as no tablets at the table and screens off before the bath. Young children follow a routine much more easily than a time limit.
2. About eight to twelve: you set the frame and negotiate the details. You decide that weekday time is limited. They get a real say in when it falls, and what they spend it on.
3. Teenagers: they propose and you agree the edges. Ask what they think is reasonable for a school night, and what they think should happen if it slips. Their answer is sometimes stricter than yours, and a rule they proposed is one they will defend.

The rules that hold up best are about where and when, not how long. "Not at the table" is easy to see. "Ninety minutes a day" needs someone to keep count, and that person is usually a parent, every day.

Once a few places and times are settled, a daily limit often matters less than you expected. A child who cannot use a screen at meals, in bed or before homework has already lost the hours that cause most of the trouble. Start with these:

1. Meals. No devices at the table, for anyone. This one is easy to check, and it protects the one time most families are in the same room.
2. Bedrooms at night. Phones and tablets charge somewhere outside the bedroom overnight, from a set time. Pick a spot in a shared room, like the kitchen counter, and make it the household's charging spot, adults' phones included.
3. Before school and homework. Screens come after, not before, on school days. Homework that needs a laptop counts as homework, not screen time.
4. The car on short trips. Optional, but many families find it the easiest time of the day to talk.

If you do use a number, decide which part is default and which part is earned.

Default time is what a child gets on an ordinary day without doing anything special: an hour after homework on a school day, say, and more at the weekend. Earned time is extra, for something you agreed in advance, such as a chore beyond the usual ones or a week of practice on an instrument.

Keep most of it default. If every minute has to be earned, screen time becomes the price of everything in the house, and a child who does not want screens this week has no reason to help. A small earned top-up gives a child a way to work toward more without turning the whole day into a trade.

Two more points. Do not take default time away for something unrelated, such as a bad report card or an argument with a sibling, unless that was in the rules from the start. And decide whether earned time can be saved for the weekend or has to be used that day. Either works. What causes the trouble is deciding it in the middle of an argument.

A time limit treats every minute on a screen the same, and they are not the same. An hour on a video call with a grandparent, an hour building something in a game with a friend, and an hour of autoplay videos are three different things.

For younger children, watching or playing alongside them is the best content rule there is. You learn what the game actually is, and they learn that you are interested, not just checking up on them. For older ones, add a few rules about content, separately from the clock:

1. What is fine at any time, such as calls with family, reading, or schoolwork.
2. What needs asking first, such as a new game, a new app or a new social account.
3. What is not allowed yet, with an age or a date when you will talk about it again.

Decide this before it happens. A consequence invented in the moment is usually bigger than the rule deserves, and it is the part a child remembers.

Keep it tied to the rule that was broken and keep it short. A phone found in the bedroom at night spends the next night, or the next three, charging in the kitchen under an adult's eye. It is not gone for a month. A first slip gets a reminder. A pattern gets a conversation about whether the rule is the right one.

Write one exception into the rules: telling you about something bad they saw, or something that went wrong online, never costs a child their device. If reporting a problem gets the phone taken away, they will stop reporting problems, and you will find out much later than you would have.

Children notice whose phone is at the table. If the rule is no devices at meals, it applies to every adult there. If phones charge in the kitchen overnight, so do yours, or you say out loud why yours does not, such as being on call for work.

Put the adults' side in writing next to the child's: we do not use our phones at the table, we ask before posting a photo of you, we do not read your messages without telling you. A contract with clauses on both sides is the one a child takes seriously, and it is also the one that changes the house.

A first phone is the moment to agree all of this, because it is the one time the answer is already yes and nobody is defending a position.

Before it arrives, agree where it charges at night, which apps it starts with, who knows the passcode, what happens if it is lost or broken, and a date to review the whole thing. Three months is a reasonable first review. Start with fewer apps than they want and add them at reviews. Adding an app later is easy. Taking one away after it has become part of their friendships is not.

Our free phone contract tool, linked below, drafts about twenty clauses for a child's age, with a section for the adults, blanks for the numbers you agree together, and a review date. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere. For many families, a printed copy on the fridge is all they need.

A rule that fits a nine-year-old is wrong for a fourteen-year-old, and a rule nobody revisits stops being followed, gradually and without anyone saying so.

Put a date on the rules, at a birthday or the start of a school year, and read them together on that date. Ask what is working, what is ignored, and what they would like to earn next, such as a later cutoff at weekends or the phone in their room on Saturday mornings. Trading a later time for a record of keeping the earlier one is a much better conversation than having the rule simply fade away.

Here is what our apps do not do. Nothing in Chickadee Bandit limits, blocks or switches off an app or a device. It does not see what a child does on a phone. The parental controls built into the device do that: Screen Time on Apple devices, and Google Family Link on Android. Use them for the limits you want the device itself to enforce. What we help with is the agreement around those controls, and keeping count of what was earned.

Family Contract holds the agreement. A parent writes it as a set of steps, such as statements to read and acknowledge, commitments to make, and costs to review, and sends it to one child. The child works through the steps in order and signs, then the parent who wrote it countersigns. Once it is sent, the wording cannot be edited. To change a rule, void the contract before it is complete, or write a new one at the review. Put the adults' commitments in as steps worded "we will", so they are part of what both of you signed.

Chores can pay in screen time instead of money, or both. An adult sets how many minutes each chore point is worth. When a week ends, the next time an adult opens Chores it totals each child's week, and with Piggy Bank installed the minutes go into that child's screen-time bank automatically. Create the screen-time bank for each child in Piggy Bank first, because a deposit to a child with no screen-time bank is skipped.

Piggy Bank keeps a separate screen-time balance for each child, next to their money. Adults add and subtract minutes with a note, and each child sees their own balance and its history. It is a ledger. When a child uses banked time, an adult subtracts it.

Rewards is for privileges that are not minutes, such as choosing the Friday film or a later bedtime on Saturday. Adults define the rewards and their cost in points. Points from completed chores add up there automatically, a child requests a reward when they have enough, and an adult approves or declines it.

Quiet Time is a game, not a screen-time tool, and it is played on phones. It is useful for one specific half hour when the house has got loud. The guide to screen-free quiet time, linked below, covers how to run it, and some games to play afterwards.

None of these are needed to have good screen time rules. Agree them, write them down, follow them yourself, and read them again on the date you set. Use the apps only if keeping count has become the part that causes arguments.

• Family Contract
• Piggy Bank
• Chores & Allowance
• Rewards
• Quiet Time

Every app in the library is included with the household plan. Install the ones this guide uses and skip the rest.

• Draft a phone and screen-time contract you both sign
• Giving a teenager more freedom without losing the thread
• How much allowance to give, and whether to tie it to chores
• How to get a loud house quiet without handing out tablets
• A chore system that does not require constant parent reminders