Family Phone Agreement
Three versions by age (7 to 10, 11 to 13, 14 and over) to fill in together before the phone arrives, while nobody is defending anything.
Family Phone Agreement
Ages 11 to 13
Write this with your child rather than for them. An agreement they helped draft is a rule they will defend; one handed down is a puzzle to solve. This is the version for a first phone of their own, where the pressure shifts from strangers to the group chat. Sign it, put it on the fridge, and revisit it as they get older.
Where the phone sleeps at night, and what time it goes there
Times the phone is away: meals, homework, family time
Which apps we have agreed on, and how I ask about a new one
Who has this number, and what I do about messages from people I do not know
What I do if something upsetting, frightening or sexual appears, and why showing you does not get me in trouble
Photos: what I will not send, and what I will not forward
What happens if this agreement is broken
What I can expect from my parents about their own phone use
When we will look at this again
Child
Parent / carer
Date
Item 5 carries the rest of the sheet, and the half most templates skip is the promise attached to it. A child who believes that reporting something costs them the phone will not report it.
Item 8 is not a courtesy. It is the one that makes the rest credible.
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Why these are paper
Because a tracking app that lives on the phone is asking the device causing the problem to also be the place you reflect on it, and because opening an app to log something is one more reason to unlock a screen. A sheet on a kitchen counter or a fridge door is visible to everyone it concerns without anyone having to go looking, which matters most for the household ones: an agreement nobody can find is an agreement nobody follows.
Every printable here is free, sits behind no email address or account, and is yours to edit. Print it, or save it as a PDF from your browser’s print dialog.
How to actually use one
- Fill it in at a fixed time. A log completed from memory at the end of the week is a different measurement from one completed each evening, and the difference is larger than most people expect.
- Do not change anything in the first week. Measuring a habit tends to shift it before you have deliberately changed anything, so a baseline collected while you are already trying to improve is not a baseline. Watch first, act second.
- Write the reason, not just the number. A total tells you how much. The column that changes behaviour is the one recording what you opened the phone for, because the useful finding is usually how many pickups had no purpose you could name afterwards.
- Fill in the household ones together. A rule written by one person and handed to another is a rule that gets tested. The clause most templates leave out is what happens when it gets broken, and agreeing that in advance, while nobody is defending anything, is the whole reason to write it down.
What a sheet cannot do
It cannot tell you whether your number is bad, because there is no threshold to compare it against: four hours in two deliberate sittings is a different situation from four hours in ninety scattered pickups, and no printable can distinguish them for you. It also cannot make a change stick on its own. The tracking is what tells you which change is worth making, and the change is a separate piece of work.