Family of four, daughter age 16, son age 14
Getting off of Instagram, Skype, Netflix and streaming music at the end of the day is a chronic challenge for the kids in this family. Guitar practice is frequently interrupted to respond to social media updates from friends. The family wants to set aside at least an hour per week for a family activity, but their schedule is too irregular to do so at a fixed time, and good intentions do not often turn into reality. It would be easy to just cut off all access to deal with these challenges, but the family schedule and the maturity of the young people allows for a more respectful approach.
At bedtime, the daughter's and son's devices lose access to social media, video, and chat services, but if they are staying up to work on school work, other services continue to operate normally. They can work on documents, perform research, and use other reference materials online as normal. In addition, the older daughter can override the social media restriction herself and regain access to these services, but she knows her parents will get an email telling them of her actions. She knows she benefits from good night's sleep, and the cutoff reminds her it is time to start winding down for the day, but she can also handle the responsibility of deciding from time to time to stay up later. The younger son is not quite ready for that level of autonomy, but he may also have been in the middle of a conversation or have some important update to respond to. He can override bedtime by a total of 30 minutes per school week, again knowing his parents will get an email if and when he does.
Music practice suffers when social media is a distraction, but benefits from Spotify in the form of playlists. During these practice sessions, the son's phone can access Spotify but nothing else, and he also gets to decide when practice starts. Once he starts practice, though, it's a full hour.
Family time is an hour. It has to happen by Sunday evening at 8 pm, so if neither parent remembers to have this family time before then, it will happen at that time. During family time all personal devices are cut off, but shared devices continue to work so they can share a Netflix movie on the family TV or play a video game together. Home automation devices and the home security system still work, and the Mom's phone continues to get email for her home-based business and for possible messages from aging parents.
Family of five, son and daughters age 17, 14, and 12 want to emphasize personal responsibility and privacy
This family wants all family members to have tools that can help each individual achieve her or his goals, without requiring a specific routine. The young people do well in school and extracurricular activities, so there is not a problem that needs fixing, but there may be an opportunity to do even better.
Each individual has access to a set of controls that affect their own devices. These controls can turn off social media, or video and music. The individual decides how long of a break they want, for example when starting homework. Once the person makes that committment, they can not turn the service back on until the time they chose elapses. Each individual also can turn off advertising and potentially dangerous content if and when concerned about privacy and malicious content from the internet.
Individuals can review their own past behaviour and remind themselves just how much time they really are spending on different activities, but no one can see anyone else's activities.
The parents do have the ability to cut off the internet entirely for each of the children if the circumstances warrant.