Family Media Plan

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.

For autistic children Screens can be especially compelling for autistic children — predictable, controllable, and sensory in ways the wider world often is not. That is information, not a fault. A media plan for an autistic child works best when it respects why the screen is soothing and builds in gentle, predictable alternatives rather than sudden removals. A warning before the transition, a visual timer, and a planned next activity do far more than a hard cut-off. If screens are one of the few reliable sources of calm, the plan should add other sources rather than simply subtract this one.

Making it stick No plan is followed perfectly, and it does not need to be — the value is in the direction, not the compliance rate. Revisit it every few months, or whenever it stops fitting: a plan that suited a three-year-old will not suit a seven-year-old. A media plan you actually return to beats a strict rule you quietly abandoned, and it models something worth passing on — that screens are a tool to be placed thoughtfully in a life, not the shape of the life itself.