How to win the family data usage battle

Brett Anderson, a financial planner from Hudson, Wis., used to get a little "ping" every time his family exceeded its monthly data usage. Every notice meant he was being charged another $15 for more gigabytes — it would add up to an extra $100 or so a month.

"We got bigger data plans, we put limits on the kids, and it was never enough," Anderson says, reserving particular bitterness for his 18-year-old daughter's use of Snapchat.

The struggle over sharing a data plan is a decidedly modern American lament. Some 55 percent of parents have limited the amount of time their teenagers can go online, according to a survey by Pew Research Center, and 65 percent have taken away their devices at one time or another.

But it is emotionally fraught territory. So how can families navigate this tricky business of data usage, without going broke or killing each other, or perhaps both? Some tips:

Go unlimited: This solution is elegant if not necessarily cheap. Having largely gone away as cell providers capitalized on people's smartphone addictions, unlimited packages are now back with a vengeance.

The Unlimited Freedom plan from Sprint offers one relatively affordable option — $50/month for the first line, $40/month each for two lines, $30/month each for four lines, and the fifth line free. That means a family of four, with additional fees and such, should be covered for around $150 a month.

Unlimited is the route Brett Anderson finally opted for a couple of months ago, since data wars were "not a fight I wanted to keep having." (More specifically, he did not wish to anger his wife with data-usage criticisms, and be relegated to the family couch.)

Educate the kids: Some kids may not actually be aware that streaming videos while not on a Wi-Fi network will eat up family data. That is what happened with Philadelphia mom Claire McGuire recently when her 13-year-old son Leo blew through a month's worth of data in just 10 days by enjoying the meme site iFunny while on the school bus.

"Oops," she says wryly.

A gentle reminder set him straight, as did a docked allowance.

Make the kids pay: There is no law against getting kids to chip in for their smartphone usage. Indeed, it can be a useful teaching moment.

On FamZoo, an online family banking service, parents get kids to contribute an average of $18.33 a month, says Bill Dwight, founder and chief executive.

Since his son never answered his phone anyway, Anderson got fed up with paying the bill, and kicked him off.

"If you don't have enough data, and it's so important to you, you can pay your own darn way," Anderson remembers. "There's nothing wrong with saying that."