Child Lock on iPhones

Saints Rest

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Probably not the best title but the right terms are escaping me.

A couple times in the last couple weeks, my wife and I have found search history on Safari on our iPhones for terms that our kids (son, 7, and/or daughter, 8) may have started innocently, but quickly took turns down a dark and inappropriate path. Keeping our kids off our phones is impossible, both on a practical and realistic level. So my wife and I are trying to find a good way to block the kids from getting on bad sites.

Any suggestions, either for Apple settings tips, or for 3rd-party apps?
 

bohous

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Jul 21, 2005
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Probably not the best title but the right terms are escaping me.

A couple times in the last couple weeks, my wife and I have found search history on Safari on our iPhones for terms that our kids (son, 7, and/or daughter, 8) may have started innocently, but quickly took turns down a dark and inappropriate path. Keeping our kids off our phones is impossible, both on a practical and realistic level. So my wife and I are trying to find a good way to block the kids from getting on bad sites.

Any suggestions, either for Apple settings tips, or for 3rd-party apps?

There are parental some parental controls for Safari, which are easy enough to find with a Google search. However I am curious about the bolded. If its a matter of just keeping them off of your phones why not just set a passcode to keep them off of your personal devices? My kids had their own iPad mini to share with their own child accounts with various parental controls enabled. That kept them off of our phones. Of course they can still try to search for stuff, and may still stumble on inappropriate stuff. They will also find the workarounds eventually. My son is 13 and has had his own phone for less than a year. I poke around on it every once in a while to see what he's up to. One day he left his last Google search open. He had searched "what is private browsing".
 

Scott Cooper's Grand Slam

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Jul 12, 2008
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New England
Probably not the best title but the right terms are escaping me.

A couple times in the last couple weeks, my wife and I have found search history on Safari on our iPhones for terms that our kids (son, 7, and/or daughter, 8) may have started innocently, but quickly took turns down a dark and inappropriate path. Keeping our kids off our phones is impossible, both on a practical and realistic level. So my wife and I are trying to find a good way to block the kids from getting on bad sites.

Any suggestions, either for Apple settings tips, or for 3rd-party apps?
Start here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304

I don’t have kids, but I think the features you want are under Screen Time. You can enable Screen Time when you give the kids your devices, and disable it when you take it back.

A kid-specific device is not a bad idea either. I gave my old iPad mini to my boss’s six year old a few years back. The kid still has it and brings it to work when he’s visiting with mom.
 

NortheasternPJ

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Nov 16, 2004
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Outside of bohous, which is my first suggestion: don't give them your phone, if they're on Wifi, I'd put Cisco Umbrella (previously OpenDNS) on your home network and filtering inappropriate content categories.
 

Saints Rest

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Here's a typical situation: Kids are in back seat on a long drive, or at end of a long day. They say "can I play a game on your phone?" or "Can I watch a video on your phone?" So we give them a phone (or a phone to each of them if they are both their and we are both in car). Their questions are honest; they aren't trying to set us up. But then they go searching for a video, or they click the wrong popup ad in one of their games, and bam, they have begun the descent to the dark side.

Or they might be legit googling something like "Puss in Boots" and you can imagine what might get auto-filled or mistyped.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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Go to "Settings" / "Screen Time" / "Content and Privacy restrictions" for starters. You will have to set a passcode the first time. It will have child content protections for your phone.

Note this is for latest OS. Think settings are in a different place in older versions.
 

HriniakPosterChild

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Jul 6, 2006
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500 feet above Lake Sammammish
Here's a typical situation: Kids are in back seat on a long drive, or at end of a long day. They say "can I play a game on your phone?" or "Can I watch a video on your phone?" So we give them a phone (or a phone to each of them if they are both their and we are both in car).
“No.”

My 12 year old so will stick his hand out toward Mrs. HPC and she will put her phone in it, which I find appalling, but she has reached the age where free will has kicked in, so I know what I have to say about it—nothing.

The kid knows what the answer will be if he asks me. (See above.)
 

mostman

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Jun 3, 2003
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Screen Time really has made a big difference here on iOS devices. For us, we can now give our kids their own devices that are entirely locked down, and only allow certain apps to be open for so long. For example, our kids have a hard time limit on all the apps we classify as 'video players'. Time is up, those apps are just blocked.
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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Dec 4, 2005
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Portsmouth, NH
Here's a typical situation: Kids are in back seat on a long drive, or at end of a long day. They say "can I play a game on your phone?" or "Can I watch a video on your phone?" So we give them a phone (or a phone to each of them if they are both their and we are both in car). Their questions are honest; they aren't trying to set us up. But then they go searching for a video, or they click the wrong popup ad in one of their games, and bam, they have begun the descent to the dark side.

Or they might be legit googling something like "Puss in Boots" and you can imagine what might get auto-filled or mistyped.
Put it in airplane mode so that can’t access data. They can play games but that’s it. Then (if you have Prime) download some movies they can watch offline.
 

wilked

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Jul 17, 2005
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“No.”

My 12 year old so will stick his hand out toward Mrs. HPC and she will put her phone in it, which I find appalling, but she has reached the age where free will has kicked in, so I know what I have to say about it—nothing.

The kid knows what the answer will be if he asks me. (See above.)
this
 

NortheasternPJ

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Nov 16, 2004
19,271
Kids that are 7/8 will figure out how to get around that in about 2 minutes.
Throw on guided access and lock them into an app. My kid is 5 and she never touches our phones. We give her an iPad mini to watch a lot but I don’t get why parents give their kids their phones. The IPad has preloaded movies and shows if she needs something to do in the car.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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Anyone have a suggestion for how to recover the screen time password without losing data?
There are a couple of tools on the web that claim to be able to get it for you but I don't know anything about them. Maybe someone else has used them. Also might want to start new thread to get more visibility.