Limit Screentime with Koalasafe - Part 1 The Upside

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today I'm going to tell you about my experience using the KoalaSafe router to limit screentime and filter content for my kids. I'm going to do this in 2 parts.  This part will cover what KoalaSafe does, how, and why it's fantastic.

When my son first got a cell phone, we put in place a bunch of behavioral rules and limits. We signed a cell phone use contract with him. It stipulated a bunch of things including a one hour limit on screen time per school day, that the phone needed to be docked in the kitchen at night and that he wouldn't be able to use it until he had his chores done. 

Honestly, I can't remember if this even worked for a little while. What I do remember was that things started falling apart quickly. Just a quick note about my son -- some kids are rule-followers. He's is most certainly not:  he is sweet and lovable, but also sneaky and a bit of a trickster. Okay -- back to the rules. First of all, requiring that he only use screen time after he finished his chores meant that I needed to be home to enforce that.  If I happened to be out of the house when he got home or out for a run in the morning when he woke up, all bets were off: his phone was in use -- and the chores didn't get done.  Also, in order to enforce the 1 hour time limit, I needed to physically set a timer.  If I didn't and I lost track of time (and my only hint was how strangely quiet things were in the house), he could easily watch another 30 minutes or hour of screen time. And the battles when the time was up were epic. He was always "almost at the end of the episode", or "just about to win some game".  So, if I gave in and walked away at that point, I had better remember to come right back or again or he would leverage my inattention for another hour or so of free screentime.  Also, I needed to start physically taking his phone because I couldn't trust that as soon as I walked away he wouldn't just start watching again.  Same with docking the phone at night. He'd allow me to take the phone at 8:30pm, but I'd walk by the docking station 15 minutes later and the phone would be gone. UGH. I just didn't have the vigilance required to ensure he was following the rules. And he was certainly not trustworthy enough to follow them without supervision. Obviously, I could have just taken the phone away until he complied completely, but it's more complicated when working with children with impulse control issues. 

I just was too distracted and absentminded to enforce all of the rules all of the time. And frankly it was causing a thousand battles a day and I was exhausted. I could see how parents would just give up. He was like the drip, drip, drip of erosion just wearing me down. 

So, I decided to see if technology could help me out. After doing some research, I decided on a router-based control system. First of all, it was relatively cheap -- just the price of the router without a monthly subscription and it seemed low maintenance when compared to some of the software options. Then I did some research into the available options and decided on KoalaSafe based on some friends' experience with the other brands (Circle by Disney and Homehalo are some of the others). It also had a slightly higher ranking on Amazon. 

KoalaSafe is a hardware or router-based approach to controlling access and filtering content. Here's how it works.  First let me show you a normal setup.  //diagram// You have a modem or wifi router (or in many cases a router that performs both functions). In order to connect to the Internet, all of your devices connect to the wifi and viola!  Everyone has total Internet access -- the good, the bad and the ugly. Here is how the router-based Internet controls work //diagram// You keep the original wifi for the parents. Then you plug, in my case, KoalaSafe into the original router (or router/wifi combo) and it creates a brand new wifi network just for your kids.  This allows you to control whatever device connects to it at a router level without having to mess with each device. And here's how you do it:

Step 1 - Change passcode for original router and reconnect parent devices

First, go into the admin website for your router and change the passcode.  Then reconnect your device and other non-kid internet devices (printers, Roku, Apple TV, thermostat, Alexa, etc.) to your original router with your new super secret passcode. Do not let this get out!  We have something like 19 internet-connected devices in our house, so if the kids figure out the passcode, it's a huge pain the butt for me to have to rechange the password and then reconnect all of the devices again[LH1] . 

Step 2 -  Plug in the KoalaSafe wifi and connect the kids' devices

Now plug the KoalaSafe router into your original router and set a password that you share with your kids.  Then connect your kid's devices to this wifi. Also, you should have their devices forget the old network. It's not crucial that you do this since you've presumably changed the password for your original wifi, but it can cause some weird issues, so I think it's a good "clean slate" idea. 

Step 3 - Download the app

Next step is to download the KoalaSafe app on your phone or you can choose to manage it through a browser (go to KoalaSafe.com -- Login). Either way, the interface is similar. 

Step 4 - Set up Profiles and add devices

I set up three profiles - one for each of my kids and one for the computers that they use for school work.  From the app, choose the + sign to add a profile, enter the pertinent information, pick an icon and create.  Once you've create a profile, you'll need to add the devices that your kids use to that profile.  Choose the profile and then Devices. Then choose the plus sign to add (or move) devices to that profile. A device can only be in one profile.  I have a billion devices in mine since it remembers all of the folks who have ever used the wifi including friends of my kids, but when you are just starting out it is simpler. 

Step 5 - Set up Primary and Homework Filters

Choose a profile, now pick Filters. KoalaSafe has two different filter modes, which I love. The primary mode includes the apps and sites that you want your kid to have access to when they have free Internet time. Homework mode should be more limited access for homework time.  The great thing is that the filters are decided and set by you. And remember, you tailor these by profile. I'll show you how I have things set up for my 15 year old son:

• Primary mode - first of all, you can see that you can allow or block individual sites. We'll come back to that in Part 2. You can also set a general filter setting, which I have set to Medium. Then go into Categories where you can make decisions by individual categories. KoalaSafe has already made some decisions based on the age that I inputted for the profile.  I essentially kept most of these decisions, but I allow email and app stores.  The biggest changes were in the area of social media and videos. My son has a Snapchat account, but does not have Instagram or Facebook. He's allowed to watch Netflix and YouTube. I'm careful to allow only the social media and video streaming that we've discussed and I've agreed to.  And, as you can see, KoalaSafe blocks adult and violent content by default. 
• Homework Mode - homework mode is more limited. My son needs access to email since that's how he communicates with teachers.  He also uses educational and other browser content. I block all gaming and videos for homework mode. I started off blocking all social media, but eventually changed that to enable iOS messaging. That means that he can get texts and FaceTime. My son made a pretty good case that since kids don't really call each other anymore, this is their primary means of communication. When he didn't have this turned on, he was always behind on what was going on and couldn't communicate with classmates about assignments. 

Step 6 - Set schedules

Here's where you can set a default schedule by day of the week.  If you want to allow screentime in the morning before school, program in some primary mode here. We give the kids free screentime until 9:30am on the weekends, so we have that set up here.  I have homework mode as the default as you can see.  It blocks most of the time-suck apps like video streaming, gaming, and social media, but it allows the kids to search the Internet if needed and get texts and FaceTime calls from friends. The initial set up where no Internet was the default seemed too draconian and they were missing out on fun activities without being able to communicate. Also, having the Internet turned on means that I can use Find My iPhone to find phones when my kids lose them in the house, which is a regular occurrence. 

Step 7 - Turn Internet on and off at will 

Once you have the filters and schedule set up to your liking and have reviewed the rules with your kids, you can turn the Internet on and off for each profile on demand. So, the rule in our house during the school week is that you get 30 minutes of free screen time provided you have done your chores which are pretty minimal.  They have to ask me or their dad to turn it on and I can do it from my phone wherever I happen to be. Choose the correct profile, choose Extend Time, make sure the filter is correct and choose the amount of time. There isn't a custom option, so you have to go with one of the preset time intervals. Our other 2 rules are that one time an hour you can ask to have 10 minutes of screentime to respond to Snapchats and the rest of the time you have to earn screentime by doing something productive: reading, going for a run, organizing, practicing your tennis serve.  I also elect to give screentime for good behavior or hard work.  They are good at making convincing cases for this. 

There are so many good things about this. Not the least of which is that when I make screentime rules -- I can actually //follow through// on them!  I need the help with enforcement since I just can't sustain that level of laser beam focus on my kids indefinitely.  

I also love that when the 30 minutes are up, it feels less personal to the kids. When I would take their phones after 30 minutes, they would get angry at me. Now, we have WAY //fewer battles// since it is less satisfying to rail against the faceless KoalaSafe. 

The last thing is that Internet access becomes a //reward// again rather than a given. If I decide to bestow an hour of screen time on my kids -- it feels like Xmas morning to them.  I can reward a whole range of positive behavior with screentime.  My son doesn't have many positive discipline levers that work for him, so I am thrilled to have this one. 

We've used KoalaSafe for just over a year now. I don't really take my kids' phones physically anymore -- even at night -- since I can control Internet access at the router level. Of course, that means they can still play silly games that don't require Internet access, or in the case of my daughter, can still record musical.lys offline, but for the most part it works for us. 

That all sounds great, right?  Well, I can tell you, it wasn't a total walk in the park to get to this point.  And with my son, it is an ongoing struggle to stay one step ahead of his multitude of workarounds. I'll talk about that in Part II.

Leave questions, experiences and thoughts in the comments section. And thanks for watching!