PARENTS who want to limit their kids’ screen time, restrict the apps children use or monitor iPhone usage need to get creative to outsmart clever kids who slip right past parental controls.
Even though Apple has privacy, content, and usage restrictions built right into its operating system, smart children have been able to slip right past those safety measures.
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Third-party apps, like Bark and Circle, can be valuable to parents, but Apple actually has a built-in feature that can help keep an eye on kids.
Parents can log on to another device, like their own phone or laptop, using their child’s Apple ID.
This lets them monitor iMessages, see which apps have been downloaded, gather data on usage, and reset any settings that sneaky kids change.
Being logged in to the child’s device and a personal device simultaneously gives comprehensive access to important data.
Access to Apple’s Screen Time feature may be the most important benefit of this trick.
Parents should navigate to Settings and then Screen Time, and then click See All Activity.
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Switch the tab at the top to Day to provide a timeline of when children were using apps.
Along with letting parents monitor restricted apps, this feature allows them to monitor what times kids used apps–letting parents catch a midnight game session or activity during the school day when phones are off-limits.
Meanwhile, in the App Store, parents can see a history of app downloads and can suss out suspicious apps that may hold viruses or social media apps that might expose kids to adult content.
Backing up kids’ messages to iCloud is another smart move.
Parents will have a record if their child gets into conflict with another kid, or if their loved one is exposed to predatory behavior.
iOS 15 introduced one more beneficial feature for parents in an iOS update this year.
The headline addition, Focus, lets users set different notification preferences depending on what they’re doing.
Parents can restrict the way notifications working, sleeping or a custom status of your choosing.
Users have the option to select if the phone makes a sound or not, or whether it vibrates, depending on its Focus status.
Focus will even notify iMessage contacts of the status to let them know why kids aren’t responding to their texts.
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