Our Family Media Agreement

Print it. Fill it in together. Sign it. Put it on the fridge.

Family: Date: Next review: (pick a date about six months out — put it on the calendar now)

Before you fill this in — read this part together

This isn’t a list of rules for the children. Everyone in the house signs it, including the adults, and the adults’ lines should cost them something. That’s not a nice gesture — it’s the thing that makes the whole agreement believable.

And it isn’t about the devices. A video call with grandparents, a lesson your child needs, a film watched together — those aren’t the problem. What we’re deciding is the default: what happens in this house when nobody decides anything. Right now, in most homes, that’s a phone — not because anyone chose it, but because the thing filling those hours was built by professionals to hold attention, and good intentions aren’t in that weight class.

So we decide in advance, while nobody’s upset. That’s the whole idea.

Our why:

“All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”

1 Corinthians 6:12

Paul’s question isn’t only is this sinful? It’s am I being brought under the power of it? That’s a question a twelve-year-old can genuinely ask about their own experience. It isn’t a rule — it’s a tool they keep after they leave home.

The Six Lines

1. Our default when nobody decides

What happens in an unassigned hour? If the honest answer is “a screen,” that’s what’s raising us in every gap.

In our house, the default is:

Ideas: outside · books · the yard · instruments · the kitchen · building something · boredom (boredom counts — it’s where a lot of good things start)

2. Where devices live

This is geography, not willpower — and geography is much easier to keep.

Devices charge here, every night:

Devices never go here:

Never make a child fight a battle a shelf could have prevented. A phone in another room is not a temptation your thirteen-year-old has to defeat at midnight.

3. Hours we protect

Whatever gets these hours is forming this family.

• Meals — no devices. (The highest-return line most families have. The table is where the conversation happens, and the conversation is where everything else happens.)
• The first hour of the day
• The last hour of the night
• Church, devotions, family time
• Other:

You don’t need many. You need these actually held.

4. What’s allowed — and who decides

Our content standard, in words a ten-year-old could apply without us:

(Philippians 4:8 gives the list — true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report — and then tells you what to do with it: meditate on these things. Not glance at. Not scroll past.)

Platforms allowed, and at what age:

Why:

Who approves anything new: (Name the person, or it quietly becomes “whoever gets asked last.”)

Passwords: a parent has them, from day one, as a fact of the house — never as an accusation later. ☐ Agreed

5. What the parents are agreeing to

This section is not optional.

• My phone is off the table too.
• I won’t be on it while my child is talking to me. (This one’s expensive. It’s also the most persuasive thing on this page.)
• Not during family hours.
• My own charging place, outside my bedroom.
• I’ll say it out loud when I get it wrong.

Anything else the adults are agreeing to:

A child who watches a parent notice their own phone habit and correct it has learned something no rule can teach: that this standard is real, and it applies to grown-ups.

6. When it’s broken

What happens:

Known and boring beats dramatic. Predictable is what works. Save something for high school.

How it gets made right (not just paid for):

When a parent breaks it: (If the answer is nothing — see #5. They’ve already noticed.)

We agree

Reviewed on: Next review:

How to actually make this work

Start with two lines, not six. Going from nothing to everything on Monday usually means negotiating by Thursday. Take the two that matter most — usually the table and the charging place — and hold those completely. Add the next one when the first two have gotten boring. Boring means it’s a habit, and the habits are the actual product.

Let them argue. Genuinely. Their objections are useful, and a plan that survives your fourteen-year-old’s best case is one you’ve actually thought through. If you can’t defend a line, it was probably worth rewriting — and rewriting it in front of them teaches more than winning would have.

Review it twice a year. Children change; platforms change. A plan that never changes stops being believed.

What this is for

You’re not aiming at a child who follows the media rules. You’re aiming at an adult who, at twenty-four, alone, with nobody watching and no plan on any fridge, can put the thing down.

That person isn’t produced by a filter. They’re produced by years of watching parents who could put it down — in a home where the ordinary hour was already full of something better.

“…but I will not be brought under the power of any.”

1 Corinthians 6:12