Should families set shared screen-free hours rather than individual limits?

Teenagers with their own phones and data plans do not obey household blackouts; they evade them. Tell a sixteen-year-old the wifi dies at nine and you will get a kid on cellular data under the covers, lying about it the next morning. Congratulations: the rule designed to bring the family together just made your kid a better liar. The research on parental monitoring is consistent that trust and communication predict outcomes better than surveillance. Common Sense's own data shows teens are ambivalent about social media already. Common Sense Media. Work with that ambivalence: talk about what they see, model putting your own phone down, agree on sleep boundaries together. A blackout imposed from above skips the conversation and goes straight to the arms race. Parents lose arms races with teenagers. Every time.