How to make a family media plan
By Adam Linmore · October 30, 2026
If screens in your house feel like a daily negotiation, with “five more minutes,” “but you said” and “why does he get to,” the answer is usually not stricter rules but clearer ones, decided in advance. A family media plan is a short written agreement about where screens live, when they are off, how much there is and what takes their place. The American Academy of Pediatrics publishes a form for it, the Family Media Plan, which takes about ten minutes. The form is not magic. Its value is that it makes the adults in a child’s life agree in writing, the step many families skip.
Here is a way to build one, step by step, for children from toddlers to twelve.
Step 1: Hold a short family meeting
Keep it to fifteen minutes, with a snack, and make it a plan, not a punishment. With school-age children, ask each person what they love doing on screens, what they love doing without them and when the arguments happen. Write the answers down. Children who helped write a plan can be asked, later, what the plan says.
Step 2: Give screens a spot and a time
The single change that does the most work is a rule about place and time, not about minutes. Pick one spot where screens live and one time when they come out, and the rest of the house and the day are screen-free by default. A screen that has a spot can be put back in it. A screen that lives everywhere never really goes off; it only pauses.
Step 3: Choose the screen-free times
Meals. The American and British guidance for young children both say none at meals, and the talk at family meals is where many of a child’s rarer words come up.
The hour before bed. This is the hour with the strongest evidence. In a British trial, toddlers whose families removed screens in that hour slept a little better. In a study of more than 10,000 mothers of children five and under, in fourteen countries, a consistent bedtime routine went with falling asleep earlier and faster and sleeping longer.
One phone-free hour for the adults, the same hour every day: the first hour home together, or the hour before bed.
Step 4: Choose the screen-free places
Bedrooms. France and the Netherlands advise no screens in bedrooms, and in an American study of preschoolers a television in the bedroom went with more sleep problems. Devices charge overnight in one shared spot, such as the kitchen.
The table.
The floor, the bath and the stroller for the adults’ phones, because those are the places where many of a young child’s turns happen.
Step 5: Decide how much, and what kind
Use the guidance for each age as the ceiling, not the target:
Under two: none, with video calls to family the exception, in nearly every guideline.
Two to five: no more than an hour a day, slow, shared and at a set time, with less being better. The book behind this site asks for none before six as far as you can manage it, a precaution rather than a guideline.
Six and older: most guidance suggests a limit rather than a ban. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2026 advisory, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), suggests two hours a day from six to eighteen, and an Italian pediatric society advises under two hours a day after five and no personal smartphone before thirteen. A French expert commission advised the President in 2024: no phone before eleven.
Some screen use is not screen time. A video call with a grandparent who answers is a conversation. A tablet that a child uses to communicate is her voice and stays within reach all day. Homework that needs a device is set by the school; it is fair to ask the school what the device is used for and for how long.
For what is watched, programs about ordinary things are better than fantastical ones, which lowered four-year-olds’ self-control right after viewing in laboratory experiments. In a trial with preschoolers, swapping violent shows for calmer ones, without cutting the total, meant fewer sleep problems six months later, though the benefit faded after the program ended.
Step 6: Agree on how screen time ends
Many programs and apps are built so that stopping is hard. In one study of the apps three- to five-year-olds played, most used manipulative design: characters that urged the child not to stop, timers that pressured her and rewards for coming back. Build the ending into the plan:
Decide the ending before it starts: “One episode, then bath.”
Choose things with an end. Turn autoplay off where you can.
Have the next thing ready, visible before the screen comes on: the snack, the bike, the puzzle.
Agree on what happens if the plan is broken, calmly and in advance, never in the heat of the moment.
Step 7: Name the exceptions
A long flight or a sick day on the couch with a slow show and a parent beside her is a fair exception. Name it out loud so that it stays one, and name what happens after it: the screen goes back in its spot. The rule that does not work is the vague one, “sometimes, when it’s hard,” which a child will test at every hard moment.
Step 8: Put the adults in the plan
Children notice the phone at dinner. In a study of American families, parents who reported more interruptions by their devices reported more behavior problems in their children later, and the influence ran in both directions: children’s behavior problems also went with more parental stress and then more device use. Nobody is to blame for that loop, and it can be interrupted at any point. Write a few adult commitments into the plan: the phone lives in the spot with the other screens, its sounds off for everything that is not a person calling, and it does not come to the table.
Step 9: Write it, sign it, post it
Put it on one page, have everyone sign, and post it where the screens live. Then review it once a month, because plans change as children grow, school starts or summer arrives. A sample:
Screens live: on the shelf in the living room; devices charge in the kitchen at night.
Screen-free times: meals · the hour before bed · the first hour home.
Screen-free places: bedrooms · the table.
How much: under six, none (video calls with family excepted); older children, ___ minutes on school days and ___ on weekends.
How it ends: decided before it starts, autoplay off, the next thing ready.
The adults promise: no phones at the table or on the floor during play.
We check this plan on: the first Sunday of each month.
What this does not mean
A family media plan is not about perfect compliance. The plan will bend on sick days and rainy weekends; it is the place you come back to.
If screens are tied up with sleep problems, big changes in mood or worries about your child’s development, talk with your child’s doctor. “Virtual autism” is not a medical diagnosis; if that phrase brought you here, read what it means, and for children past the toddler years, what changes for older children.
Sources: American Academy of Pediatrics 2016, and its Family Media Plan; United Kingdom Department of Health and Social Care 2026; Snow and Beals 2006; Pickard et al. 2024; Mindell et al. 2015; Garrison, Liekweg and Christakis 2011; Garrison and Christakis 2012; Office of the U.S. Surgeon General 2026; Società Italiana di Pediatria 2025; Lillard et al. 2015; Radesky et al. 2022; McDaniel and Radesky 2018b. Full references are in chapters 10, 11, 15 and 17 and appendix C of Virtual Autism; the sources page lists the key studies behind this site, and the guidelines page summarizes national screen-time guidance.
Want the full picture? Virtual Autism sets out the research, its limits and a practical plan for home.
General information, not medical advice. If you are worried about your child, talk to your child’s doctor.