Screen Time Pact Template for Friends (Free, Copy-Paste)

By the Snitch team, behavioural science experts from Imperial College London #templates#friends

A free screen time pact to paste into your group chat: daily goal, phone-free times, check-ins, break days and a forfeit. Fill in the blanks and you're in.

Made by the team behind Snitch. The template is free to use however you like. How we write these guides

A pact turns “we should all go on our phones less” into something you’ve actually agreed. Copy this into your group chat, fill in the blanks, and get everyone to reply “I’m in”.

The template

## Our Screen Time Pact


Who's in: ____, ____, ____, ____
Starts: ____  Review date: ____


1. Our daily goal: under ___ hours each (or ___ hours total as a group)
2. Apps we're cutting: ____, ____, ____
3. Phone-free times: meals / after ___pm / first hour after waking
4. Check-in: every ____ we each share our screen time
5. Break days: each of us gets ___ day(s) off a month, no questions asked
6. If someone goes over: they ____ (buy coffee / pick the film / do the washing up)
7. If we hit our goal: we ____ together (offline!)


Signed: ____ ____ ____ ____

Tips for a pact that lasts

  • Keep the goal realistic. Cut by a third first, not to zero.
  • Make the forfeit fun, not humiliating.
  • Build in break days. All-or-nothing pacts break on the first bad day. (Why planned breaks work.)
  • Review after two weeks and adjust.

Automate it

The hardest part is the check-ins. Snitch tracks it for you: your group shares a daily screen time pot, going over eats into everyone’s time, and there’s a Rot Day once a month built in.

Start a Snitch group →