Family Media Plan
From American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — HealthyChildren.org · source: healthychildren.org
The American Academy of Pediatrics' tool for building a household media plan — bedtime, mealtime, and content guidelines tailored to each child's age, with practical examples for younger and older children.
Screens are part of family life, and a blanket ban rarely survives contact with a real household. A family media plan is a calmer alternative: a small set of agreements about when, where, and how screens are used, made once and revisited as children grow. The American Academy of Pediatrics offers a free tool for building one, and its framing is deliberately flexible — there is no single number that is right for every child.
What a media plan is A media plan is not a punishment or a strict quota. It is a shared understanding — ideally written down — of the times and places that stay screen-free, the kinds of content that are welcome, and how screens fit around sleep, meals, movement, and time together. Because it is built for your particular family rather than pulled from a rulebook, it is far easier to actually keep.
Why a plan beats a rule Rules are brittle. "One hour a day" collapses the moment a long journey, an illness, or a rainy week arrives, and the collapse can feel like failure. A plan bends. It protects what matters most — sleep, shared meals, unstructured play — and lets the rest flex. That shift, from policing minutes to protecting priorities, tends to lower the daily friction around screens for everyone.
Building one for your family A workable plan usually names a few things: - Screen-free times: the hour before bed, mealtimes, the morning rush - Screen-free places: bedrooms overnight, the dinner table - What counts as good content, and what does not - Who watches with whom, especially for younger children - What replaces the screen when it goes off
The AAP tool walks through these with age-based examples, from toddlers to teenagers. It is worth doing together with older children, who keep to a plan far better when they helped write it.