How to Use Parental Restrictions on Your Kid's iPhone

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today we are going to go over how to use the parental restrictions that are built right into the iPhone and iPad. 

Okay -- so today we are going to explore the parental controls that Apple has built into their iOS devices. They actually can be quite powerful. I know a family that essentially transformed an iPhone temporarily back into a dumb phone for their daughter just by using these controls.  More about that later on. 

Okay -- go into Settings --> General --> Restrictions. By default, the Restrictions are all turned off. In order to make any changes in this area, you will need to create a passcode.  Choose to Enable Restrictions and select a 4-digit passcode.  This is something you will not be sharing with your kid, so make a note of it somewhere private.  

Allow Apps:

The first area allows you choose which native apps to allow on your kid's device. By native, I mean the ones that come preinstalled.  You will notice that there are some apps missing from this list. Most notably, you cannot turn off "phone calling", texting or photos. Here are the apps you can turn off: Safari (or Internet browser), Camera, Siri & Dictation, FaceTime (or video calling), AirDrop (which allows you to send files to other iOS devices in your vicinity), CarPlay (which connects your device to some cars), the iTunes Store (where you can buy music and movies), Apple Music Connect (which allows artists to upload music, from what I can tell), iBooks store, Podcasts, and News. Basically, if you turn off an app, it just disappears. Like it never existed. Cool, right?  This is the only way to delete these -- you'll notice that if you try to delete apps the normal way, these native apps will wiggle, but won't give you an X to delete them.  The only way is through this Restrictions screen. Note that some native apps can be deleted the regular way like Mail, Contacts and Calendar.  

At the very end of this section are three options.  The first is Installing Apps. So, if you turns this off, your kids can't install any additional apps on the phone. Next is Deleting Apps. You might want to turn this on if you have, for example, a monitoring app installed on the device that you don't want your kid to mess with. The third is In-App Purchases. This may be the most important thing in the whole Restrictions area.  Turning off In-App Purchases means that your kid cannot buy coins, gems, upgrades or whatever tempting thing they are hawking inside individual game apps.  Almost everyone has --or has heard -- a horror story about having a crazy credit card bill due to in-app purchases. I read about a seven year old who spent $6,000 on upgrading dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park app. Kids don't have great self-control and even if they are older than 7, it's better to eliminate this as an option.  For what it is worth, Apple will generally refund you if you complain because even they seem to understand the immorality of tempting elementary school kids in this way. 

The next section is //Allowed Content//

First pick the country whose ratings you want to use.  Then you can set content restrictions for music, podcast & news, movies, tv shows, books, apps, Siri and websites. Each of these has a rating system that is slightly different.  Movies, TV shows and apps have a more granular break-down by age.  And music, Siri and websites have just a toggle between "explicit" on or off.  Also note that you can determine whether Siri searches the web or not from this area.  Under websites you can choose between limiting adult content (with the option to allow or restrict specific websites) or you can choose to only allow a list of specific websites like Disney channel and National Geographic for littler kids. You can add websites to this list as well.  

The area for Password Settings is useful for determining whether your kids need a passcode for Purchases and In-app Purchases and Free Apps.  And you can choose whether you need the passcode everytime, or whether you get 15 minutes before it asks again. Make it every time. Otherwise your kids will ask permission for an innocuous app and then download a bunch of unapproved stuff during that 15 minute open bonanza. 

The next area is //Privacy//:

This determines whether your kid can make changes to the privacy decisions already made in Settings --> Privacy.  Basically, this governs whether you can share location services (or where you are) or which apps have access to data from your phone. This information sharing sounds sinister, but it can be helpful. Turning location services on helps apps find stores near you or movies playing in your area when you search using the browser. And allowing apps to share info on your phone means that you can pull photos from Camera Roll into editing apps or use your contacts for email apps.  Or use the phone's microphone to record in listening or recording apps. Okay -- back to the restrictions area, if you say "Don't Allow Changes" that means that the apps you have already selected can still share data, but your kid can't add additional apps or make changes to those previously approved. 

The next area is //Allow Changes//

Again, this is an area where you are restricting changes to areas that have already been set up.  You can restrict accounts, cellular data use, background app refresh (which allows apps to pull data even when they are not in use), volume controls and TV provider. Let's talk about 2 of these -- first Accounts. Selecting "Don't Allow Changes" here means that your kid can't add any new Gmail or other accounts for email, contacts or calendar. So, they are limited to what has already been set up and --presumably -- approved by you. The other area is Cellular Data Usage. Go to Settings --> Cellular and scroll down to the "Use Cellular Data for:" area.  This allows you to determine which apps use Cellular data and which can't update themselves unless the device is using wifi. This is helpful if your kid is using too much cellular data and you don't have limits set up with your provider. You can turn off using cellular data for YouTube or Netflix and then in Restrictions select "Don't Allow Changes" to Cellular Data Usage.  That way your kid can't undo your restrictions. 

The last Restrictions area is Game Center:

This governs game apps that use Apple's Game Center as a social media tool for playing with friends. From what I understand, these functions are now built directly into the game apps. You can restrict whether your kid can play multiplayer games, can add friends or can use the screen recording option that some apps incorporate. Apparently, some apps have their own social media networks built in and don't use Game Center, so if you want to restrict your kids ability to play with friends, make sure you a little research on that specific game. 

So, that covers the parental Restrictions that iOS devices have built in. If you want to turn your kid's iPhone into a dumb phone, delete all of the apps that you can using the normal "press and wiggle" methodology and then turn on every restriction available -- but most importantly restrict the ability to install new apps. And that should do it!  

Remember, any changes you make to this Restrictions area will only govern that specific device, so be sure to make the changes to each device your child uses.  I know from past experience that it is probably best to use the same passcode for every device to keep things simple. 

Leave your questions, thoughts, and experiences in the comments sections to keep the conversation going. And thanks for watching!