The first screen time contract I ever wrote was a masterpiece. Eleven rules, beautifully lettered, taped to the fridge. My grandson read it, said “okay” in the voice children use when they have stopped listening, and it was dead within nine days.
The second one was five lines on a sheet of lined paper. He argued about two of them, made me change one, and signed it. That one is still on the fridge.
The difference was not the wording. The difference was that the first document was a list of things he was not allowed to do, with my name at the bottom, and the second one was a deal in which he got something before he gave anything up.
That is the whole trick, and everything below is just the shape of it.
A rule is you against them. Paper is a third party.
When the rule lives in your head, every enforcement is a fresh negotiation with a person — and children are extremely good at negotiating with people. They know which parent is softer, which hour you are tired, and exactly how many times to ask.
When the rule lives on paper that both of you signed, the argument moves off you and onto the document. You stop being the one saying no. You become the one reading out what was already agreed, which is a much easier job and a much duller opponent.
It also does something quieter that I did not expect the first time: it makes the limit feel less like a judgement of them. The paper is not disappointed in anybody. It just says what it says.
My co-contributor Priya writes the other half of this on the Kids side — how to tell when screens are taking over your summer — and I would let a child read that one before you sit down to write anything together. It lands better coming from her.
A contract where the child gets nothing is just a rule with a signature line at the bottom.
Rebecca
Five clauses, in this order
The order matters as much as the content. What they get comes first. If the first thing on the page is a restriction, they have stopped reading before they reach the part where they win something.
What they get — and what they choose about it.
Name the amount, then hand over as much control of it as you can stand. The choice is the part that buys their signature. A child who picks which hour, or which days are longer, is a child who has agreed to something rather than had something done to them.
Be honest about the number. If you write down an amount you will not actually hold to on a wet Sunday, you have written a lie into clause one and everything under it is now optional.
What does not count.
Homework. A video call with a grandparent. The photos they take. The long car journey. Write the carve-outs down explicitly, because if you do not, you will spend the next month adjudicating whether a school project counts, and they will win, and they will be right.
Generous carve-outs also prevent the worst outcome: a child who hides what they are doing because everything costs them the same.
Where the devices sleep.
Not a time limit — a place. One charging spot, out of the bedrooms, everything on it by an agreed hour. This is the clause I would keep if I could only keep one, and it is the one that will get the most resistance, which is not a coincidence.
It works because it is a physical fact rather than a rule about willpower. Nobody has to resist anything at eleven at night if the thing is downstairs in the hall.
What happens when it is broken — written while everybody is calm.
Small, specific, and agreed in advance. Losing the same amount of time tomorrow is usually enough. The consequences people invent mid-argument are always too big to actually enforce, and an unenforced consequence teaches a child that the whole document is theatre.
Write it now, in a good mood, together. It is much easier to agree to a fair penalty before you need it.
The date you tear it up.
Put an expiry on it. Six or eight weeks, then you both sit down and renegotiate. Children will sign almost anything that is not forever.
It is also just true. A ten-year-old’s deal should not survive into their teens unchanged, and the renegotiation is where they learn that limits move when you have kept your side.
What ours actually says
Copy it by hand. Handwritten is better than printed — a document in your own writing on a piece of ordinary paper is harder to dismiss than something that looks like it came off the internet.
The Screen Agreement
- You get ____ minutes on school days and ____ on weekends, and you choose when. If you want to save them up for one long Saturday, that is allowed.
- These do not count: school work, calls with family, taking photos, and anything we are all watching together.
- Everything charges in the kitchen from ____ at night until morning. This applies to every person in this house.
- Grown-ups’ side: no phones at the table, and when you are telling me something, my phone goes face down.
- If the agreement is broken, the same amount of time comes off tomorrow. Nothing else happens. Nobody shouts.
- We rewrite this on ____. Anything in it can change then, and you get to ask first.
Both parties keep a copy · fridge and bedroom door
Six lines. Two signatures. It takes four minutes to write and it is the only version I have ever had survive past a fortnight.
The one that isn’t about them at all
The grown-ups’ clause is why the paper gets signed. I have watched it land on a child’s face more than once — the moment they realise this is not a document about them, it is a document about the house.
Pick something real and slightly uncomfortable. Phone face down when they are talking to you. Nothing at the table. No scrolling during the film you agreed to watch together. Then keep it, visibly, including the evening you do not feel like it, because they are absolutely watching to see whether the rules apply upstairs.
The first time you break your own clause, hand over the same penalty you would have applied to them and do it cheerfully. That single moment is worth more than the other five clauses put together.
Visible, or it does not exist
A signed agreement in a drawer is a piece of paper in a drawer. It has to be somewhere everybody walks past — the fridge, the back of a door, the side of a cupboard — and the running total, if you keep one, has to be somewhere a child can check without asking you. Half of the arguments in our house were about whether time had been used, not about the limit itself.
You need almost nothing here. Paper and a pen will do the whole job. The one thing I did eventually buy is a wipe-clean board for the kitchen wall, because a running tally the children could see and update themselves ended the daily “how much have I got left” conversation entirely. That is the whole purchase. Everything else about this is free.
Dry erase family planner boardsSome links on this page are affiliate links — if you buy through one, HowTo: Family Edition earns a commission at no extra cost to you.
Hold the paper, not the argument
It will be broken. Probably in week two, probably over something small, probably at the exact moment you have no energy for it.
When it happens, read the clause out loud and apply it exactly as written. Do not add to it because you are annoyed, do not negotiate a new penalty on the spot, and do not deliver a speech. “That’s twenty minutes off tomorrow. It’s in the agreement” is the entire conversation. Then let it go completely — no follow-up, no reference to it at dinner.
If you find yourself rewriting the document in the middle of a bad week, stop. A contract that changes every time it is inconvenient is not a contract. Wait for the renegotiation date. It is only a few weeks away, which is exactly why you put one in.
And if it collapses entirely — some of them do — write a shorter one. Every version of this I have ever seen fail, failed because it was too long.
One thing worth saying plainly. An agreement is a shared understanding, not a surveillance system — if a child cannot see the terms, has not agreed to them, and is being monitored without knowing, that is a different arrangement and it will cost you trust you may need later. And separately: if what worries you is not the number of hours but a change in the child — sleep that has fallen apart, withdrawal from things they used to love, real distress when a device is put away, or anything happening to them online that they are frightened to tell you — that is not a contract problem and no document will fix it. That belongs with your pediatrician, your school, or a professional who can actually help. I have written a lot of these with a lot of children. That does not make me qualified to tell you what is going on with yours.
Five clauses, on ordinary paper, in your own handwriting, with your own name on a line beside theirs. Short enough to read out loud in an argument. That is the version that lasts.
Rebecca
August 2026
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