Fam · Free printable
One page that ends the daily negotiation: a weekly minutes chart, the house rules checklist, and a schedule template for weekdays and weekends — plus the honest by-age guidance so the numbers you write in aren't guesses. Print free — no signup.
Screen time fights are not about screens; they're about undefined numbers. "A bit longer" means whatever the kid can negotiate, and the parent holding the router becomes the villain. A printed screen time chart moves the argument onto paper: the chart, not you, says when the minutes run out. Fill it Sunday, post it on the fridge, and the daily conversation changes from "five more minutes" to "check the chart." This template prints the whole system — tracker, rules, schedule — on one sheet, and pairs with the screen time agreement for families who want a signed version.
Write the earned minutes in the first row of each day (from chores, reading, or a flat baseline — your house, your rule), and the actual used minutes underneath. Kids tracking their own minutes self-regulate faster than kids whose minutes are enforced silently; the gap between earned and used is the conversation.
| Tracker | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kid 1 — earned minutes | |||||||
| Kid 1 — actual used | |||||||
| Kid 2 — earned minutes | |||||||
| Kid 2 — actual used | |||||||
| Family — movie / together night |
The non-negotiables that apply before any minutes get spent. Tick them off with your kids when you introduce the chart — rules kids helped write get broken less.
| House rule | We follow it |
|---|---|
| Homework and chores done first | ☐ |
| One show or game block, then a 10-minute break | ☐ |
| No screens at the table | ☐ |
| Devices sleep outside the bedroom | ☐ |
| Ask before downloading anything | ☐ |
| Screens off 60 minutes before bed | ☐ |
| Weekend movie night counts as together time, not solo time | ☐ |
When screens are allowed matters as much as how long. Fill the windows once — vague schedules produce constant renegotiation.
| Window | Weekdays | Weekend |
|---|---|---|
| Morning (before school) | ||
| After school — homework first? | ||
| Dinner hour | ||
| Weekday bedtime cut-off | ||
| Saturday | ||
| Sunday |
Parents searching for a magic per-age number deserve the straight answer: published guidance is specific for young children and deliberately general after that. The AAP and WHO guidance in common use: under 2, avoid entertainment screens (video calls excepted); ages 2–5, about one hour per day of quality programming; ages 6 and up, no authoritative single number — the guidance is to set consistent limits that protect sleep, exercise, and offline time. Any website claiming an exact "recommended hours by age" chart for older kids is decorating a guess. Use the table below as the starting point for your own written limits:
| Age | Commonly cited guidance |
|---|---|
| Under 2 | Avoid entertainment screens; video calls with family are the exception |
| 2–5 | About 1 hour/day of quality programming, watched together when possible |
| 6–12 | No published single number — set a consistent family limit (1–2 hrs school-night entertainment is the common range) |
| Teens | Consistency beats a number: agree limits together and hold them same as adults' own phone use |
Apps enforce automatically and win on forgetting — but kids can't see the minutes they're spending, enforcement reads as surveillance, and the limit becomes the app's number instead of a family agreement. Paper costs you one audit per day and buys the self-tracking habit; a chart the kid updates is the version that survives age 9. A reasonable hybrid: paper chart on the fridge, app as the hard bedtime backstop.
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