First phone rules
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Most lists give you fifteen rules. Four of them do the work: the phone charges outside the bedroom, it is off during class, nobody uses phones at the table, and telling you about a problem never costs the child the phone.
The last one is not a rule about phones. It is the rule that keeps the other three from becoming something your child hides from.
A long list feels thorough and is usually a wish. Fifteen rules cannot all be enforced, so some quietly lapse, and a child learns that rules here expire on their own. Four rules you actually hold are worth more than fifteen you announce.
1. The phone charges outside the bedroom
Of everything you could decide about a first phone, this is the one with the largest effect — bigger than any app on any ladder.
It is also the one with the clearest evidence behind it. The ABCD Study, which followed 10,280 adolescents aged 10 to 14, found that having a television or internet-connected device in the bedroom raised the risk of trouble falling or staying asleep by about a quarter (adjusted risk ratio 1.27). A phone costs sleep even on nights nobody picks it up, because the possibility of it is enough.
The practical version: one charger, in the kitchen or the hall, for everyone in the house. A rule about where phones sleep is much easier to keep than a rule about when they are used.
Worth agreeing in advance: this rule ends. Around 15 the phone can come into the room, still on a charger and still not in the bed; by 16 it goes entirely. A rule with a published expiry date gets argued with far less than one that looks permanent.
2. It is off or locked during class
Usually this is the school's rule anyway, which makes it the cheapest one on the list — you are not inventing a restriction, you are agreeing once to something that would otherwise be relitigated every term.
Putting it in writing matters for a different reason: when the school changes its policy, you have a document to update together rather than a new argument to have.
3. No phones at the table — including yours
This is the rule your child will ask to add, and the one that proves the plan is not a list of things being done to one person.
It is also the test of whether any of this is real. A rule the adults break in front of the child is not a rule; it is a reminder that the phone matters more than the conversation, and that the restrictions are about age rather than about attention. Children read that instantly and it costs you the credibility you need for the other three.
4. Telling you is never what gets the phone taken away
Every safety mechanism you set up depends on one thing: your child saying something early, while the problem is still small. A child who expects to lose the phone for reporting a problem reports nothing — and the thing surfaces months later, bigger.
So this rule has to be unconditional, and it has to be said in those words:
If something happens on this phone — something you see, something someone says, something you do and regret — telling us is never what gets the phone taken away.
Not "usually". Not "depends what it is". Never. The conversation will be about the thing that happened. It will not be about whether you keep the phone.
This is the rule that costs parents the most, because the moment it is tested is exactly the moment you will want to take the phone. That is why it belongs in a signed document written on a calm day rather than in a decision made on a bad one.
It also means the consequence for a genuine mistake cannot be confiscation. Keep consequences for the rules that were broken knowingly, and keep them small enough that you will actually apply them.
Rules should have end dates too
Almost every phone agreement you can download is a snapshot: a list of rules for a child of one age, with nothing that says what happens next. A ten-year-old signs it and at thirteen it is either ignored or renegotiated from scratch in an argument.
Writing the relaxation into the rule fixes that. "The phone charges outside the bedroom" is a rule a child fights. "The phone charges outside the bedroom until you are 15, then it can be in the room on a charger, and at 16 this ends with the plan" is a schedule a child can wait out — and waiting it out is exactly the behaviour you want.
What doesn't work
- Fifteen rules. Enforcement capacity is the real limit, not intent. Pick the ones you will hold on a Tuesday when you are tired.
- Rules that only apply to the child. Every one of them is teaching that phone rules are about being young, not about attention or sleep — which means they expire at adulthood rather than becoming habits.
- Confiscation as the default consequence. It punishes honesty along with everything else, and it removes the way your child reaches you. If a phone must come away, deal with how they contact you first.
- Screen time as a reward. Making time on the phone the prize for good behaviour teaches that the phone is the most valuable thing available. The ladder here uses readiness instead: you do a short session about the thing before it opens.
- Rules with no end. A restriction with no published finish line invites a child to route around it rather than wait for it.
Put them where they will survive
Rules agreed out loud fade within a fortnight. The version that lasts is written down, signed by everyone including the adults, and stuck somewhere ordinary.
The generator below puts these four into a document alongside the ladder of what opens at what age, with the reason next to each one. It takes about a minute, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
Printable, no sign-up, nothing saved.
Questions people ask
What age should these rules start?
Day one, whatever day one is. They are easier to start with the phone than to introduce later — though introducing them later is normal and works, as long as you are honest that you are changing the deal rather than pretending the rules were always there.
What if we already gave them a phone with no rules?
That is the common case, not the failure case. Start from where you are: agree the four, write down what is not changing so it is clear nothing is being taken back, and give the rules that restrict something new a start date a couple of weeks out rather than tonight.
Should there be a rule about what they can look at?
You can add one, but be realistic about what it does. Filters leak, other people's phones exist, and a rule that is broken by accident on someone else's device mostly teaches a child not to mention it. The "telling you costs nothing" rule does more for that problem than a content rule does.
Do we need a consequence written down for each rule?
Better to agree the principle: consequences are small, they are proportionate, and they are never applied to the act of telling you something. Writing an exact penalty next to each rule tends to produce penalties nobody applies, which weakens every rule on the page.
What about phones at bedtime for younger children?
The bedroom rule matters most here, and it is easiest when it starts on day one and applies to the whole house. If the adults' phones charge in the kitchen too, it stops being a punishment and becomes how this family handles phones.