Digital Life · Your People
Not a lockdown. Not a free pass. A short set of rules the whole family agrees on, revisited as children grow.
The approach
The goal of household ground rules is not to block every possible risk. It is to build a child who recognizes when something is wrong and comes to a parent before it gets worse. A child who knows the rules and understands why they exist is safer than a child who is simply locked out of everything, because restrictions without understanding create workarounds.
Good ground rules are short enough to remember, specific enough to follow, and flexible enough to grow with the child. They apply to everyone in the household, including adults, because children learn more from what they see than from what they are told.
This page covers what information children should never share, how to set up accounts with appropriate privacy defaults, when to involve a parent, and how the rules change as children get older.
The core rules
Post these somewhere visible. Talk about them. Revisit them when something happens in the news or in the child's experience that makes one of them real.
If something online makes you uncomfortable, confused, scared, or just feels wrong, come to a parent before responding, clicking, or deleting. You will never be in trouble for asking. This is the most important rule on this page.
Your full name, home address, school name, phone number, and passwords are private. Do not share them in chats, games, social media profiles, or with people you only know online. Do not post photos that show your house, school building, or uniform.
Someone who says they are a kid might not be. Someone who is nice at first might not stay that way. Never agree to meet someone you met online without a parent's knowledge, and never share your location with someone you do not know in person.
Your passwords are shared only with your parents. Not with friends, not with classmates, not with anyone who asks for them online, no matter the reason they give.
Anything posted online can be screenshot, shared, and seen by people you did not intend. Before posting, ask: would I be comfortable if my teacher or grandparent saw this? If not, do not post it.
If anyone contacts you claiming to be a family member and asks you to do something, use the family code word. Voice cloning can make a stranger sound like your parent. The code word is the check.
Setup
Most platforms and apps default to sharing more than necessary. Spending 15 minutes adjusting privacy settings when an account is first created prevents problems that are harder to fix later.
Apple (Screen Time), Google (Family Link), and Microsoft (Family Safety) all offer child account types that give parents visibility into activity and control over app installations and screen time. These are built into the operating system and do not require a separate app.
On any social platform, set the account to private so only approved followers can see posts. Turn off location tagging. Disable the ability for strangers to send direct messages. Review these settings together so your child understands what each one does.
Federal law (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA) requires websites and apps to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13.1 Most major platforms set their minimum age at 13 for this reason. Letting a child bypass age requirements by entering a false birth date removes the protections the law provides and leaves the child's data unprotected.2
Walk through the permissions each app requests: location, camera, microphone, contacts. Explain what each one means and revoke permissions that do not match what the app does. A game does not need access to the microphone. A note-taking app does not need the camera. Make this a shared activity, not something done behind the child's back. See A Reasonable Privacy Baseline for the full household walkthrough.
Adjust by age
What works for a seven-year-old does not work for a fifteen-year-old. The core rules stay the same, but the level of independence and the conversations around them change.
At this age, screens are shared, not private. The child uses a parent's device or a family device in a common room. Apps are approved by a parent before installation. The core conversation is simple: we do not talk to strangers online, and we come to a parent if something feels wrong.
Use age-appropriate versions of apps where they exist (YouTube Kids, Messenger Kids). These are not perfect, but they filter out the majority of content not intended for children.
Many children get their first phone in this range. Use a child account (Apple Screen Time, Google Family Link) with age-appropriate content filters and app approval requirements. Set screen time limits that the family agrees on together.
The conversation deepens: what information is safe to share and what is not, why private accounts matter, how screenshots mean nothing online is truly temporary, and what to do if someone makes them uncomfortable. COPPA protections apply until age 13, and most platforms do not allow independent accounts until then.1
At 13, children can legally create their own accounts on most platforms. The shift is from direct control to trust with transparency. The ground rules still apply, but enforcement becomes conversational rather than mechanical.
Keep the agreement that you can see their accounts if you have concerns, but do not read every message. The goal is a teenager who comes to you when something goes wrong, not one who creates a second account you do not know about. Review privacy settings together periodically, especially when they join a new platform.
This is also the age to discuss digital reputation: college admissions officers and future employers search social media. What exists online today may surface years from now.
Watch for these
Lying about the child's age to create an account.
Entering a false birth date to bypass a platform's age requirement removes the legal protections COPPA provides for children under 13. It also teaches the child that rules are negotiable when inconvenient.2
Installing surveillance software without telling the child.
Secret monitoring damages trust. When children discover it, and they usually do, they learn to hide their activity more carefully. Open rules and shared conversations are more effective and more durable.
Setting rules for children that adults do not follow.
If you tell your child not to use their phone during dinner but check yours constantly, the rule loses authority. Ground rules work when they apply to the whole household.
Punishing the child for reporting something uncomfortable.
If a child tells you they saw something disturbing or received a strange message and your response is to take their device away, they will not report the next time. Protect the reporting channel above all else.
Keep going
This page was last reviewed in July 2026. Digital guidance changes faster than most preparedness topics. If that date is more than a year old, confirm key steps against the sources above before acting on them.
Enough for now
Revisit the ground rules together every school year, or when your child joins a new platform.
This guide is part of When Something Looks Off — all the guides for this concern in one place.