How do you handle screen time over the summer?

We've tried setting hourly limits by day, which the kids can (generally) use whenever they want during the day. For example, 1 hour a day on Saturday and Sunday, and 3 hours a day on weekdays (when we are working). This can be hard to monitor, though, and we often find ourselves needing to make exceptions to the general rule. If your kids are old/responsible enough, there are timers you can give them to track their own hours (or just have them do it manually, or on their phone's timer function, if they have one).

For my teens in particular, I will sometimes have them leave their devices with me, and then come to me to request permission to use them for a particular purpose (to message friends, play a game, etc). Here, my goal is to help them be thoughtful about the time they spend on their phones, rather than to keep them from doing the things they enjoy on there. It is too easy to move mindlessly from one thing to another on our phones, so this helps them have a specific (and somewhat time-limited) purpose for being on their phone.

We've experimented with no screens for a set time (a week, a couple of weeks, a day), with the length of time determined by our goal. For example, when it seems like the kids are getting too dependent on their screens and it is becoming difficult for them to have healthy limits, we'll do two full weeks with no screens. The first several days are rough, but just before the 1 week mark, we see that they "re-learn" the ability to play on their own and otherwise entertain themselves without screens. It makes it really tempting to swear off screens altogether, but they are such useful and versatile tools I doubt we'll ever truly go there.

When we set screen time limits, we usually limit these to personal devices that they are using for non-school purposes. So, we don't include family movie nights, for example, or family gaming on the Switch. We tend to treat shared screens differently (and more loosely), too. So, we will place fewer time limits on movies, shows or games they watch or play together on our family TV than we do on tablets or phones.