Apple’s parental controls don’t help parents or kids

Last week, my family and I, like many others in the United States, hopped in the car to see a total solar eclipse. And like many other parents, I planned to use my iPad to distract my kids for some of this long adventure.

My child is only under 2 years old, so he hasn’t spent a lot of time on screens, other than occasionally “playing” games on his phone or watching train videos. I still had the idea of ​​just watching a few downloaded videos, but this was the first time I actually planned on handing over the entire device. And as I set up my iPad, I realized something that probably many parents before me have also discovered. Giving your child her Apple device can be a bit of a hassle.

I’ve been covering Apple for nearly 20 years, so you’d be forgiven for thinking this wouldn’t come as a shock, but the simple truth is, like The Matrix, this is something you have to experience for yourself. Ultimately, I concluded that Apple really needs to improve this experience for all of us time- and attention-strapped parents in a variety of ways.

everything is forgiven

First, let’s talk about Apple. do The company has built extensive parental controls into its operating system, all now collected under the protection of Screen Time. Ostensibly, this set of features allows parents to not only monitor how much time their children spend using the device, but also control restrictions such as the apps they can use and the settings they can change.

All was well and good, but once again, as I, a veteran technology journalist with almost 20 years of experience under my belt, set out to prepare all of this, one thing quickly became clear. pain. By default, everything is on and allowed, even if the iCloud account you’re logging into is your child’s account (more on that later).

one thing will do What comes in handy here is some sort of child profile. Permissions are locked down by default, allowing parents to selectively enable features they want their children to have access to. This also makes sense from the perspective of enabling more features as the child grows. It would also be nice to be able to go into ad-hoc mode without having to spend time setting up all the different permissions, just like Netflix has a kids profile where you can log in with just kids content. . Reduces friction by removing all tampering.

This does not mean that such a function exists. sufficientbut it would be a good starting point.

Please give me your ID

Having made it through the eclipse trip without any major technology or child-related glitches, I decided to start tinkering with my setup further in preparation for more complex future trips. At that point, the best approach seemed to be to take the plunge and set up her Apple ID for the child.

apple

apple

apple

Again, to its credit, Apple is trying to make this process easier. If Family Sharing is enabled, you can create a child account that links your Apple ID to your family to give your child access to shared purchases, but in some regions certain features may be unavailable. You can also control its behavior.

Unfortunately for me, the setup process was full of bugs. After several attempts to create a child account on my phone, I slowly entered the password each time (because I couldn’t easily autofill the password using iCloud Keychain) or (please paste it into the field), I kept getting an error message saying I couldn’t create an account. Eventually I gave up and tried it on my Mac and had no luck. Except I accidentally accepted the default email address that was created for me. or The system offered no option to change it.

Changing to the correct email address was similarly tedious and required a verification email to be sent to me as a parent, which took so long to arrive that I thought I had made a mistake. I tried to cancel and resubmit the request, but when I received the email and clicked on the approval link, it said it was invalid. beginning request. (Not to mention the truly awful user experience involved.) This is certainly more of a criticism of its reliability than of the setup process, but reliability is key. I wouldn’t blame you if most people give up on her second or third time. When you fail.

I finally got everything sorted and got my ID. So I went back to my iPad and combined the two.

Please the two never meet

So I found out that when logging into a child account, I have to disable all permissions from the beginning (except content restrictions). did (It appears to be transferred from your Apple ID settings). This seems a little silly considering the Apple ID account is marked as child-only. Certainly it makes more sense to disable permissions by default, or at least respect the permissions already set. It is set.

But beyond permission issues, there are other challenges to handing an iPad to a young child. For example, if you let your kids watch a video, there’s always a chance they might accidentally touch a control or turn off the iPad screen. Fortunately, you can avoid this by using the Guided Access accessibility feature. While this is useful, it’s also a pain to configure, as you have to choose and configure which areas of the screen (or other hardware features) are off-limits.Up another Passcode (located above Device and Screen Time passcode). It’s a great accessibility feature, but as a feature aimed at parents, I feel like it needs some simplicity to encourage usage.

But perhaps Screen Time’s biggest weakness is its use of passcodes. Yes, it’s nice to need authentication to make changes…but do you need a 4-digit passcode? In this economy? Apple has long recommended six-digit, if not fully alphanumeric, passcodes for devices. Indeed, it will not be difficult for the child to hear her four numbers. We parents are often too exhausted in our quest for quality OPSEC.

I am well aware that this situation becomes even more difficult as the child gets older. In addition to wanting more autonomy and more ability, if my own youth is any indication, I’m actively trying to find ways around this situation. There are limits, at least out of curiosity. Technology isn’t the only or best way to deal with it, but it would certainly help if Apple offered tools that were a little better tailored to the unique challenges of parenting in the digital age.