Family Screen Balance Index: How Balanced Is Your Family's Screen Time?

Healthy screen time is less about a single magic number and more about balance for your child's age. Under 2, the anchor is almost no screen time apart from video chats. From 2 to 5, up to about an hour a day of high-quality, co-used content with consistent limits is a common healthy rhythm. From 6 and up, the focus shifts to consistent limits, good content, and protecting sleep, activity, and in-person time. The Family Screen Balance Index reads your answers against your child's exact age and shows where your family's rhythm is strong and where a small change would help.

It is a free, LBL-original parent tool that maps your family's screen ecosystem for one child across six areas: co-use and connection, boundaries and routine, content quality, displacement protection, soothing balance, and modeling and climate. Instead of a grade, it gives a balance map, a strengths-first description of your family's screen rhythm, and a few practical moves to try. It is grounded in public guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization.

This tool deliberately avoids the word addiction, which is a clinical term that only a qualified professional can assess. Most worry about screens is really about balance: whether screens are shared, bounded, good quality, and kept from crowding out sleep, play, and time together. The Family Screen Balance Index helps you see that balance clearly and calmly, and shows where a small adjustment would help, without labeling your child or your family.

For children under 2, the healthy anchor is almost no screen time apart from video chats with family, and any screen use is best shared with an adult who talks about what is on the screen. If you are already keeping screens minimal at this age, that is exactly right, and the tool recognizes it as a strength rather than reading it as low engagement.

Predictability does most of the work. Pick one or two screen-off moments that stay the same every day, like during meals or the half hour before bed, and a screen-free zone like the bedroom. Give a warning before time is up, and for older children and teens, set the limits together so they feel collaborative rather than imposed. The premium report includes word-for-word scripts for ending screen time and holding a limit calmly.

Screens close to bedtime can make it harder for children to fall asleep and can cut into the sleep they need. A simple, effective move is to make the bedroom a screen-free zone and stop screens at a set time before bed. Protecting sleep is one of the most important parts of screen balance, and the tool checks for it directly under displacement protection.

A family media plan is a simple, agreed-upon set of household rules for screens: when and where they are used, what counts as good content, and what stays screen-free, like meals, bedrooms, and the hour before bed. The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages families to make one together. The premium report turns your results into a fill-in family media plan you can put on the fridge.

No. It is educational and observational. It does not diagnose, screen for, or measure any condition, including screen addiction, and it never grades your child or your parenting. Its purpose is to help you see your family's screen rhythm clearly and make small, practical changes.

Yes. The entire tool runs in your browser, and your answers about your child are never sent to our servers. If you choose the optional premium report, only the information needed to generate that PDF is processed for that purpose.