You’ve said it before. Probably more than once, probably over dinner. “We’re all on our phones too much.” Everyone agrees in the moment. Then Wednesday happens, and by the weekend the table is lit up again and you’d struggle to point at the exact moment it slid back.

None of which means you’re failing at this. The apps are made by people who get paid a great deal to make them hard to put down, and “use it less” holds up about as well as a New Year’s resolution. What tends to go better is turning it into something you all do together rather than something you police — a small family screen-time challenge, adults very much included.

Why “use your phone less” never holds

Because it’s barely an instruction. Less than what? Starting when? Counting which apps? There’s nothing solid to hold to, so the first tired evening waters it down to nothing and nobody even notices deciding that. We went into this properly over in the piece on why vague goals fail and “if-then” plans don’t. A rule with an actual trigger — phones in the basket the second we sit down — gets through a Tuesday. “Less” never does.

Then there’s the bit nobody enjoys admitting. Children copy what you do, not what you announce. If the rule lands on them and quietly skips you, if you’re “just replying to one work thing” while they’ve been told to put it away, it stops reading as a household habit and starts reading as a telling-off. Those don’t last very long.

Make it a challenge, not a crackdown

A lot of it is just framing. One parent confiscating phones and nagging about it wears thin by Thursday, mostly for the parent. A challenge sits lighter: the whole house is signed up, the score is something everyone can see, and there’s something decent waiting at the end of the week if it holds together. Nobody’s being punished. You’re all on the same side of it for once. And you don’t need a clean sweep, either — a family digital detox that everyone half-keeps will beat a strict one nobody believes in.

Four challenges worth trying

Pick one. Genuinely, just one. Trying to run all four at once is how you end up running none of them. Go for whichever lands on the worst stretch of your day.

  • No-phone dinner. All ages. Phones go in a basket in another room before anyone sits down, adults included, and come back out after. Half an hour or so, most nights. The first evening or two is genuinely stilted. Then it isn’t.
  • Screen-free weekend. All ages. One weekend a month with something actually planned — a walk, a swim, some daft project that takes up the afternoon — so the time doesn’t just yawn open. A screen-free weekend goes a lot better with a plan for the boredom than when you confiscate the telly and hope.
  • After-school break. Roughly six to fourteen. Through the door, devices off for half an hour. Snack, moan about their day, draw something, whatever it is. A breather after school, not a punishment for having been at school.
  • Bedtime screen curfew. Eight to eighteen, though the adults could do a lot worse than join in. Phones charge somewhere shared for the last hour before bed. Of the four this is the one with real evidence behind it, which is coming up next.

What the evidence actually says (and doesn’t)

A quick bit of honesty, since the headlines won’t hand you any. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health went through the research and landed somewhere fairly underwhelming: the case that screens directly damage children’s mental health is a good deal shakier than the panic around it suggests. So you can ease off treating every hour as if it’s doing harm. Where the evidence firms up is on two fronts. Screens chew into sleep. And they crowd out the better stuff — running about outside, being in the same room as people instead of a feed.

Which is exactly why the bedtime curfew earns its spot. The NHS is plain that screens in the hour before sleep make it harder to drop off, and patchy sleep is where a fair chunk of the next-day fog, the short tempers and the shot attention spans actually begin. It’s also why the American Academy of Pediatrics talks about a family media plan instead of a magic number: keep some times and places screen-free, meals and bedrooms above all, and write it as a household. For the under-fives the WHO keeps it blunter still — sit less, play more.

So I wouldn’t lose sleep over halving screen time for kids by Friday. Protect the sleep, protect mealtimes, and don’t let the scroll quietly eat the hours that would have refilled everyone. The number tends to sort itself out once those are in place.

Making it stick

Give it a name. A daft name is fine; a daft name probably helps. Stick the score somewhere everyone walks past, the fridge or wherever. Pick a reward you’d all actually want, and only hand it over if the week held. Expect some grumbling early on — the first few days of any screen-free challenge feel off precisely because the habit was pulling its weight, filling the dead minutes, taking the edge off feeling overstimulated. It settles down.

At the end of the week, ask the one question worth asking: “what did you notice?” People are more honest than you’d bet on. A teenager mumbling that they actually slept. A younger one delighted to discover they’re funny at the table. Go gently, go by example, and treat the whole thing as practice rather than a test you’ve set them. It’s the same loop that drags a household off the doomscroll, and more or less the one that keeps grown-up friendships ticking over. Small and regular, not much effort to it, and far easier when you’re not the only one bothering.

Asked by readers

Questions readers send us most often, with the pieces that answer each in full.

FAQ

How much screen time is too much for a child?
There’s no single magic number, and bodies like the RCPCH have stopped pretending there is one. What matters more than the total is what the screens are pushing out — if they’re eating into sleep, meals, movement and face-to-face time, that’s the line, whatever the clock says. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests building a family media plan around those protected zones rather than a fixed hour count.
Should the rules apply to parents too?
Yes — and it’s the part that makes or breaks it. Kids copy what they see, not what they’re told, so a no-phone dinner the adults quietly exempt themselves from reads as a crackdown and falls apart fast. A challenge everyone’s in feels like a team thing instead of a punishment, and tends to actually hold.
What if my kids refuse to take part?
Expect pushback in the first few days — the habit was doing real work, so losing it feels boring or annoying at first. Make it a challenge with a name, a visible score and a reward they’d genuinely want, rather than a ban. Start with one slot (usually dinner or the last hour before bed) instead of a blanket detox, and let the win build from there.
Does a family digital detox actually do anything?
The honest answer: the evidence for direct harm from screens is weaker than the headlines, but the evidence that screens disrupt sleep and crowd out activity and real contact is consistent. So a detox aimed at protecting sleep and mealtimes tends to pay off in better rest and calmer evenings — more than one aimed at a screen-time number for its own sake.