Family agreements changes: AI, tracking and in-app money

The agreement you wrote three years ago has a gap in it the size of everything that did not exist three years ago. That is not a failure of drafting. It is what happens to any document about a moving subject, and the fix is a habit rather than a rewrite.

This page is about the family agreements changes that arrive with new technology — the kinds of thing that now need a line and did not use to, how to add one without reopening the whole page, and the two things that should never change however much arrives around them.

What to take away

The amendment rule

Before any of the territory below, settle the mechanism. Either of you can propose a line. It gets added, dated, in one sentence, without reopening anything else. It is reviewed with the rest at the next review date.

Written out, one added line looks like this:

"ChatGPT and Snapchat's My AI, added this month: nothing typed there is private, and if either one says something that worries you, tell a person the same day."

One sentence, dated, slotted in beside the others, and reviewed with the rest at the next review date.

This does two things. It stops every new app from becoming a constitutional argument. And it gives your child a route to change the document that does not involve breaking a rule to make a point. Family agreements covers why a fixed review date matters; the amendment rule is what carries the page between them.

Things that talk back

Conversational systems that answer in a voice, remember what was said, and are available at three in the morning — ChatGPT, Snapchat's My AI, Character.AI — are now part of ordinary teenage life, and few agreements written before them say anything about them.

The clause is not a ban, which would be unenforceable. It draws a line about what the thing is: not a person, unable to keep a secret like a friend, and anything typed into it may be stored by whoever runs it.

It also draws a line about what matters: if something it says worries you, bring it to a person the same day.

A related line covers homework. Not a rule about cheating, which is the school's territory, but an agreement about honesty with each other about what was written by whom.

Things that watch

A household now generates a great deal more data about its members than it did: location through Life360 or Find My, a Ring doorbell at the front door, a car that reports where it has been. A child who did not consent to being logged by a device the adults bought is a child being monitored by accident.

The clause is about symmetry and disclosure. What the household's devices record about everyone, who can see it, and the rule that nobody looks without saying. Parental controls sets out why covert monitoring costs what it costs, and the principle does not change because the monitoring came bundled with a car.

Things that belong to someone else

School-issued devices. A laptop or tablet from school is configured by the school, may be monitored by the school, and often follows the child home. What a school may do with a pupil's device is set by the framework above it: in England, the Department for Education publishes Searching, screening and confiscation: advice for schools, which shows the shape such a framework takes and applies only there. The household clause is not about controlling it. It is about knowing: ask the school what the device records and whether you are told, and share the answer with your child.

Other people's images. Group photos, tagged posts, a friend's account with looser settings. The line that most families now need is about their own conduct: ask before posting anyone, and expect the same from us.

A job, a bus route, a first car. Independence arrives in forms that have nothing to do with screens, and an agreement that only ever talks about the phone is describing a smaller life than the one your child is living. Add the line that matters, which is usually about being reachable, and loosen something in exchange.

For what a service may collect about a young person in the first place, go to the regulator rather than to the product. In the United States the Federal Trade Commission maintains material on children's online privacy, and the law behind it is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which covers children under 13. Elsewhere your national data protection authority is the equivalent starting point.

Money that moves inside apps

Gifting inside streams, in-game currencies like Robux in Roblox and V-Bucks in Fortnite, trading items, and payments between friends through the same apps that carry their messages — Venmo, Cash App. The old clause about not spending without asking no longer covers the ground.

The new plan has three parts. An agreed amount, set by the two of you and written into the page, spent freely inside it. Purchases above it need approval. One plain rule stands outside the household: nothing, ever, to anyone you only know online. If someone asks, stop replying and tell us.

Teen social media use covers why the request for money is the moment that matters. The platforms draw the first line themselves: Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube all set their minimum age at 13.

Writing the new line the old way

Every clause above should pass the tests the old ones had to. It describes something a person can see. It is about the thing, not the child. It has an exit or an exception. And it does not make telling you more expensive.

A finished line reads like this: "Life360 stays on; if you want it off for an afternoon, you tell us instead of turning it off in secret." It describes something you can see, it is about the app rather than about the child, and it leaves an exit that is not silence.

The last test is the one new clauses fail most often, because new territory is frightening and fear writes consequences. A line that penalises a child for what a chatbot said, or for a photo someone else posted, is a line that buys silence about exactly the things you most need to hear.

What does not change

Two lines survive every amendment.

The promise that coming to you about something that has gone wrong will not cost the phone, whatever the thing turns out to be and whatever they did before it went wrong. New territory makes this promise more valuable, not less, because the new things are the ones you understand least and will hear about last.

And the night, in whatever form your house has settled on, because sleep is the one boundary that keeps paying at every age. Screen-time habits covers defending it as a claim about sleep rather than about their friends.

Common questions

The page is getting long again.

Then the review date is doing its job by arriving. Cut at the review, not between reviews. A single added line does no harm; a page that is rewritten every month becomes a mood.

My child wants a clause about something I do not understand.

Ask them to explain it, and write the line in their words. A clause about a thing you do not understand, written by the person who does, is the best kind of clause on the page.

Something new has already gone wrong.

Deal with the thing first, together, and write nothing down at all for two weeks. Label any clause born from an incident as such and give it an end date.

If the incident involved cruelty, a stranger, or a demand for money or images, it is not a clause matter. reporting resources covers what to do, and emergency services come first where there is any danger.