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Family Screen Plan

This tool needs JavaScript to build your sheet, and without it nothing on this page builds one.

The short version to write on paper: Every question on it can be answered on paper without the form: what screens are for here, what the adults keep to as well, what happens first when somebody tells you something went wrong, and who else they can go to. If a child is being harmed, threatened or pushed into something through a device, deal with that first, with a person who can act. For immediate danger, contact the local emergency or safeguarding service where the child is.

Nothing saved yet

Who is this plan for?

The stage goes at the top of the printed sheet, so the plan says who it was written for. It changes nothing else, and it does not produce a time limit.

The stage you are writing this for

Who is writing it (Optional)

A plan written about somebody rather than with them is a rule, not an agreement. Writing it on your own first is fine, it just is not agreed until you have had the conversation.

What are screens actually for in this house?

Start from what happens, not from what you wish happened. A rule about a use nobody has is easy to agree and changes nothing.

The uses this plan covers

Which moments are protected?

A few protected moments are easier to keep than a running total of hours, and easier to tell whether you kept to them.

Moments with no screens in them

What a protected moment never takes away (Optional)

A moment with no screens in it still has exceptions. Write them down now rather than argue about them at the table.

A word, a sound, a picture, a timer or a sign: whatever this child can actually take in.

Something that is really there when the screen goes off, or the person who helps with the change.

Which settings will you look at?

Only the ones you plan to check yourselves, on the device or in the service. This page cannot see or change a device: ticking a box here changes nothing on it.

Settings to check (Optional)

What are the adults signing up to?

This is the half that makes the rest credible. Pick the ones you will actually keep, not the ones that sound best.

Rules the adults keep too

If you are writing this with them, ask what they want the adults to stop doing. Write it down even if it stings.

What happens when something goes wrong?

Something will go wrong, sooner or later: frightening content, contact from a stranger, a purchase nobody meant to make, a photo that got out. If telling you is what costs them the device, telling you gets rarer. Decide now what happens first.

The first thing that happens when they tell you (Optional)

Name someone other than you, by role if you like: another adult in the family, a teacher, an older sibling. Write down how they reach that person, not only who it is.

Promise what you can hold to: not reading everything, not telling other parents, not making them delete an account on the spot. Keeping something secret from everybody is not on that list, because if someone is being hurt the adults may have to tell a person who can stop it.

The AI part

This step is here because you ticked AI assistants as one of the uses. What you agree here sits under the age rules of the service and the rules of their school; a rule at home does not lift either of those.

Make four checks before the first question

Make four separate checks before any educational use:

1. Permission check: Is this child allowed to use this exact service with this kind of account (their own, a parent’s, or one set up by the school)?

2. Privacy check: What do current consent, privacy, and child-data rules require where the child is?

3. School check: Does the teacher or school permit AI for this task, and how must help be disclosed?

4. Readiness check: Can this learner understand the task, the AI service’s limits, and the adult support available?

An age in a provider’s terms does not mark a stage of child development. It also does not settle local law, school permission, or whether the tool fits one child and task. Adult supervision does not cancel an age rule. An adult should not hand over adult credentials merely because the adult could conduct an approved activity.

If any check fails, choose a real alternative: a book, teacher, calculator, library source, speech-to-text tool, printed worked example, or adult-led activity. A child should still be able to pursue the same learning goal if AI is not allowed. Use a non-AI option when no suitable account meets the privacy and child-data rules, the service is not accessible to the child, the needed equipment or connection is unavailable, or the family says no.

What an assistant is agreed for here (Optional)

The limit: what it is not for (Optional)

This is the limits half of the plan. Pick the ones you will say out loud.

A name or a role, whoever is actually in the house. Agree it now: a model saying something strange to a child at eleven at night is a thing that happens, and the plan should not be invented at eleven at night. The trusted person must be someone the child can reach, not just a name an adult prefers.

Short and doable, for instance: stop, leave it on the screen, and show one of us.

One service, checked together

Choose one AI service or mode the child uses. Complete the check together where possible. Every line is optional, nothing here is a score or a diagnosis, and it records the service and your choices, not what the child said to it: no names, private messages, health details or images.

The kind of service is enough, for instance "the AI assistant in the homework app". No account name.

Features it has (Optional)

The kinds of information, not the information itself.

An observation, not a score. Leave it blank if you have not noticed anything.

The stop signal can be a word, gesture, picture, switch, or message through augmentative and alternative communication (AAC).

Write a second route if the first person is unavailable or involved in the concern.

A child who needs support to leave an app should know who will help and what that person will do. Test the route during a calm moment.

Choose a date, an event, or a regular time to review it together.

When do you read this again?

A plan you never open again turns into a rule nobody agreed to. Say when you read it together.

Choose a date, an event, or a regular time to review it together.

What would make you look at it sooner (Optional)

The ten-minute attention reset

Reference CMP-110

An optional ten-minute exercise at the table to practice checking something before believing it. Pause entertainment use, adults first, while keeping communication, health, caregiving and necessary access available. If you followed a short address for the attention reset, this section is it.

The evidence behind this exercise is one field study and a pooled average across very different programs. Neither says anything about ten minutes at a kitchen table. Use it if it helps, and treat it as an idea rather than a method that is known to work.

  1. Say out loud what you are all doing right now. Not a judgment, just the sentence. "We have all been on our phones for forty minutes."
  2. Pause entertainment use for the exercise, adults first. Keep communication, health, caregiving and necessary access available.
  3. Pick one thing somebody saw today that they had a reaction to. Anything: a video, a headline, a message in a group.
  4. Look for it somewhere other than where you found it. Not a second post repeating it, a different place entirely. If you cannot find it, that is the finding.
  5. Decide out loud what this house does with it. Believe it, ignore it, ask somebody who would know, or leave it open.

Ten minutes, once, is not a media literacy program, and nothing here is evidence that it works. What it does is make the checking step visible: an adult looking something up out loud, in front of the children, instead of deciding in silence.

The checking routine itself, written out as a sheet you can print, is on the Family AI Learning page.

Where this sheet stops

This plan is written between people who trust each other. If a child is being harmed, threatened or coerced through a device, that is not a rules problem and this page is not the right help: go to a person who can act, straight away, whatever the plan says about waiting until everyone is calm. For immediate danger, contact the local emergency or safeguarding service where the child is. Do not blame the child, do not pay anyone, and do not make a new copy, screenshot or forward of the material.

What this will not do
  • It does not work out a screen time allowance for you. Guidance on screen use exists, it differs by age, by country and by what the screen is being used for, and this page does not turn any of it into a number of minutes for your child.
  • It does not control, monitor or check any device, and it cannot tell you whether a parental control is switched on or working.
  • It is not a contract and it settles nothing on its own. It records what people wrote down, and it becomes an agreement only once they have talked it through.
  • It cannot certify that an app, a game or an assistant is safe for your child. Nothing on a website can.
  • It does not replace the age rules a service sets, or the rules a school sets for its own devices and accounts. What a family agrees at home sits under those, it does not lift them.
Privacy and sources

Everything you type is worked out on this device. None of it is sent anywhere, and saving is a button you press on purpose.

Sources of this tool

Written for any country: nothing on it is specific to where you live yet.

The book's references for chapter 18

This plan is written between people who trust each other. If a child is being harmed, threatened or coerced through a device, that is not a rules problem and this page is not the right help: go to a person who can act, straight away, whatever the plan says about waiting until everyone is calm. For immediate danger, contact the local emergency or safeguarding service where the child is. Do not blame the child, do not pay anyone, and do not make a new copy, screenshot or forward of the material.