The Only Three Screen-Time Rules That Survived a Whole Year

We tried charts, timers and apps. These three simple rules are the ones still standing.

We have tried everything: the sticker chart, the router schedule, the app that locks the tablet and the shouting. Almost none of it lasted a month.

Rule one: screens live downstairs overnight. All of them, including the adults'. This is the rule that changed sleep, and it only works because it applies to me too.

Rule two: no screens during food. Not a moral position — it's just the only time of day the four of us reliably talk.

Rule three: content matters more than minutes. Forty minutes of building something is not the same as forty minutes of scrolling, and pretending otherwise made our rules feel arbitrary to the kids.

Everything else we dropped. Three rules we actually enforce beat ten we don't.