Half term without a screen fight
Published 19 October 2026
Half term without a screen fight
Published 19 October 2026
The short version
- There is official advice for under-5s. For ages 5 to 16 there is none yet — it was promised for this autumn.
- The clearest evidence is not about how long. It is about what, and who with.
- A finish causes fewer arguments than a limit.
The week before half term
Half term is next week in most of England, and the screen argument usually arrives on about day two.
The pattern is familiar. Day one is fine because there are plans. By Tuesday the plans have run out, the weather is bad, and you are negotiating.
A little thinking now is worth more than any rule you improvise on Tuesday afternoon.
What has the government actually said?
Two different things, and it matters which is which.
For under-5s, guidance exists. It was published in March 2026 by the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, after an expert group reviewed the evidence.
For 5 to 16, it does not exist yet. In June 2026 the government announced it was writing some and opened a call for evidence, saying the guidance would be published "this autumn".
⚠️ So if you read an article confidently telling you the government's screen rules for a seven-year-old, be careful. As we write, there are none. We will update this post when the real guidance lands.
What the under-5s advice says, and why it is still useful
Three things came out of it, and none of them is a number of minutes.
Under 2: screens alone do not help. The expert view is that children under two gain no benefit from using media by themselves. Shared screens — a video call with a grandparent — are a different thing.
Watching with an adult beats watching alone. This is the strongest finding. A parent watching alongside, talking about it and asking questions, is linked to better development than the same child watching alone.
Slow beats fast. Slow-paced content is better for a young child than fast, scrolling, social-media-style video.
📌 Notice what is missing: a time limit. The advice is about the kind of screen use, not the quantity — and the government has said the 5–16 guidance will also avoid blanket rules.
What that means for half term
Worry about what, before you worry about how long. Half an hour of endless short videos and half an hour of something your child has to think about are not the same half hour. Most household rules treat them as identical, which is why they feel unfair to children and why they are so hard to enforce.
Have a finish, not a limit. "Two more levels" or "to the end of the episode" causes far fewer arguments than "twenty more minutes", because a child can see the end coming. Let a timer be the one saying stop. Being able to blame the clock is worth a great deal.
Plan the transition, not just the cut-off. Most fights are not about stopping — they are about stopping into nothing. "Screen off, then we're going to the shop" works far better than "screen off".
Sit with them sometimes. You do not have to do it always. It is the thing with the best evidence behind it.
Things that genuinely reduce arguments
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| A visible timer | The clock says stop, not you. Sand timers work well for younger children |
| A charging spot downstairs | Everyone's devices, including yours, live there overnight |
| Something to do instead | "Stop" works much better with a "start" attached |
| One long session rather than five short ones | A child who is interrupted five times feels policed all day |
🔒 Two things we will not recommend. Not parental control software and not tracking devices. Those are safety products — if they fail, a child is less safe, and we have not tested them. A timer and a board game are a different kind of object. We have not tested those either, and we are not claiming they will change your child's behaviour.
Is what they play on our site different?
We think so. You can decide whether you buy it.
A CrumbJar daily puzzle has a start and an end. You do it, it is done, and nothing else is served up. No feed, no autoplay, no next thing loading while you decide. There is no reason to come back sooner than tomorrow, which is close to the opposite of how most screen time is designed.
But it is still a screen. If your child has had enough today, they have had enough. Ours will be there tomorrow — that is the point of a daily.
The one thing not to do
Do not go from four hours to zero on the Monday of half term.
It will not hold, everyone will be miserable, and the failure makes the next attempt harder. If you want less, aim for less, starting with the hour before bed.
Where this comes from
- New guidance on screen use for children aged 5–16, Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care, 8 June 2026 — the announcement, the call for evidence, "this autumn", and the commitment to avoid blanket rules.
- Screen use by children aged under five, the independent Early Years Screen Time Advisory Group report, and the guidance for parents of under-5s published 27 March 2026.
⚠️ The suggestions about timers, finishes and transitions are ours, not government advice.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
About us
And who we are: CrumbJar is a British puzzle-games studio. We make daily word and number games that children and adults play on a screen, and the games are free. So we have an interest in you thinking well of screens, and an interest in you buying things through our links. We would rather you knew that than found out.