Phone rules for families: where to start at each age

Most phone rules at home fail for the same reason: they were imposed without agreement, made no room for exceptions, and applied only to the children. What helps most is agreeing on a few rules, explaining the reason for each, and applying them to the adults too. The rest of this post is a starting point by age, not a tested recipe.

What the numbers show, and what they don't prove

According to the Common Sense Media census (2021), children aged 8 to 12 spent an average of 5h33 a day in front of screens, and teens spent 8h39. The survey counts every kind of screen, such as video, games and school, not only phones, and it's a 2021 snapshot from the United States.

According to the meta-analysis by Sohn and colleagues (BMC Psychiatry, 2019), which pooled 41 studies, problematic phone use in children and young people is associated with 3.17 times the odds of depression, 3.05 times of anxiety and 2.6 times of worse sleep. That is association. The research doesn't say whether the phone causes this or whether young people who are already struggling use their phones more.

None of these studies defines how many hours are "too many" for a child. That's why the suggestions below are practical starting points, with no promise of a result.

By age: what tends to be workable

These bands are a practical way to organise things, not clinical advice. Adjust to your family, and if you have a question about a specific child, talk to a pediatrician.

Little ones, up to about 5

Choose content with a beginning and an end, like an episode, over a feed that keeps going on its own. If you can, watch together: you know what the child saw and can talk about it.

6 to 9

Screen-free places and times are easier to keep than counting minutes: the dinner table, the bedroom at night, the first hour of the morning. It's also the age to agree on what to do when something scary or confusing shows up, and for the child to know they can tell you without getting in trouble.

10 to 13

This is the age of the first personal phone, and two decisions are practical to make early: delaying social media, if the family wants to, and keeping the charger out of the bedroom. No study cited here proves the effect of either, so treat them as household agreements, not guarantees.

14 to 17

Direct control tends to meet workarounds. The more sustainable route is to agree on timing, be clear about what is monitored and talk about what shows up in the feed. Monitoring in secret tends to cost trust when it's discovered.

Four agreements for any age

1. No screens in the last hour before bed.
2. No phones at the table during meals, adults included.
3. Chargers in a shared space overnight, for the whole household.
4. Screens outside the reward-and-punishment logic, so they don't become a bargaining chip.

And technical blocking?

A tool helps sustain the agreement but doesn't replace it. A block installed without a conversation reads as distrust. The same block, agreed in advance, is just the practical way to keep what you decided. The iPhone has Screen Time for this, under Settings → Screen Time.

For today, pick one agreement from the list, talk about it at dinner and start with yourself.