No time limit at all. Instead, screens are excluded from places and moments: not at meals, not in bedrooms, not in the hour before bed, not in the car on short journeys. The claim is that the damage screens do is mostly displacement — of sleep, of conversation, of going outside — so protecting what they displace is more precise than rationing the screen itself.
What it asks of you
- Rules that bind the whole household, visibly, including the adults
- Holding the bedroom rule when every other family has stopped
- Accepting that the total will sometimes look alarming, because you are not counting it
No externally imposed limit, on the argument that a child who has never regulated their own use has not learned to, and will meet the problem later with less support and a worse device. You talk about how it feels, you notice out loud when an afternoon has gone, and you let the natural consequences — the wasted Saturday, the bad sleep — do the teaching. The position demands a great deal of trust and is the one most likely to be regretted.
What it asks of you
- Genuine nerve, and a long horizon before it looks like it is working
- Frequent, non-judgemental conversation, which is more work than a timer
- Watching a child overdo it without stepping in, repeatedly
- An honest look at whether this is a position or a surrender — they look identical from outside