Our eldest is at that stage where we need to get her a phone and I have no idea how to use Apple tech to make the phone secure.
How does Apple Family protect children? What can be locked down etc.? How have you managed phones for your children.
On a family setup you can control what gets installed, how long they get on each app and some pretty fine tuned stuff per app. It also lets you track location and lock the phone if it’s lost (which I’ve needed a couple of times).
I also have nextDNS and connect my son’s phone via Tailscale, so all his traffic is filtered at DNS, so I can block tracking, pron, etc.
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Here’s a run down of how it works : Use parental controls to manage your child's iPhone or iPad – Apple Support (UK)
I held out for longer than most, but last spring when Verizon had four iPhone 16s for free, for current customer, no trade-in required, unlimited plans, for “$25 per line” it was too hard to pass up.
I spent a while getting their phones all set up. for simplicity the 16 year old and the two 14 year olds all have the same settings pretty much. in screen time, I disabled almost everything you can disable. I made contacts the only people they can contact. and those contacts have to be added by us (the family organizers). safari is disabled and web searches through Siri are disabled. podcast, news, bookstore, music are also disabled. for extra measure, those apps also have a limit of 0 minutes use per day. so in theory even if they were re-enabled they would still have a 0 minute limit.
and like the user above, I also have nextdns on them so that I can block things even when they are off the home wifi (which also has nextdns). ive never gone exploring what the iOS setting “limit adult content” actually blocks, but between that and the nextdns filters I feel confident that ive done what I can to let them enjoy having a device like their peers, but it was also set up by a tech nerd.
for apps, no apps are installed unless they are approved. for screen time, I have a limit for all apps and then a lower limit for games and entertainment apps. seems simple, but make sure you have the “block when time limit is reached” (or whatever it is called) selected so that they don’t simply ignore the limit.
that being said, sometimes DownTime is buggy. one child will have times where his device simply won’t let him do anything even though it is day time hours. a restart usually fixes it and if it doesn’t for wthaever reason he just manually request more time for the apps he is using.
another tidbit: if you have any shared items, such as a shared reminders list, shared note, shared folder in Files, etc… make sure you set all of that up before blocking safari. the shared invitations are iCloud.com links. whenever I make a new list to share in reminders I have to turn safari back on, accept the invite, then block safari again. that is a small aggravation.
and one more: a time or two (I think one time discipline and another time just being funny), I put their phones in what I call jitterbug mode. you don’t hear about it much, and im surprised it isn’t talked about more, but it would be a good mode for really limiting what they can do. I have also used it at times to put my phone in a simple-mode when it could only call, text, and check the weather.
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A few things to read up on:
- Screen Time (built into Apple devices);
- Your router’s filtering tools (Eero, for example, has fairly robust filtering of different kinds of content and apps, but it only works when in your home);
- Third-party content-filtering tools, such as Circle, if that is still even around;
- Things like Bark, which can be both a layer on an iPhone, or done via a dedicated “Bark Phone,” which is a modified Android phone, I believe. My wife got our daughter a Bark Phone with a cell plan, but my daughter hates it and takes an iPhone with her everywhere instead, and just gets on WiFi and uses iMessage and FaceTime.
For my kids I have their devices limited to only work until 8 PM, then all apps are blocked. I also set it up so they need to ask to install apps, so I can control what they use. The hardest decision for us was social media - we decided to not allow our kids to install apps like WhatsApp in particular as we don’t want wierdos having the opportunity to chat with our kids! They are quite content in the end using iMessage - despite us living in a country where WhatsApp is the default.