How To Set Up Screen Time On Childs Iphone

Screen time has become something of a preoccupation for modern parents. Should you limit your child's screen time? How much daily screen time should they have? During the school holidays, when the amount of time that children spend in front of the TV or using a smartphone or tablet can easily creep up, these questions have even greater relevance.

There are currently no hard-and-fast guidelines on what constitutes a 'healthy' amount of screen time, so it's down to parents to set their own boundaries for their child's use of tech. Thankfully, the enhanced parental controls in the latest version of Apple's operating system, iOS 12, which was released today, promise to make this task a whole lot easier.

Among the new features of the latest Apple operating system is Screen Time. This gives parents more control over when their children use their iPhones and iPads and what content they have access to. It will even report on how many times a day a child uses their iPhone or iPad and how long they spend using different types of apps.

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Set no-tech times
The settings in the new Screen Time feature allows parents to set times when their child is unable to use the apps on their iPhone or iPad – at bedtime, for instance. These tech-free periods are called Downtimes. Parents can restrict their child's access to all the apps on their device, except for the Settings and Clock – and the Wallet, Phone and Find My iPhone app on the iPhone. There's also an 'Always Allowed' section where you can specify which apps they can always access.

Setting up a Downtime is easy. You just need to enter the start and end times for the tech-free period that suits your child's schedule. If your child tries to use their iPhone or iPad between these times, they'll see a message telling them their use of the device is limited at that time.

If your child is feeling bold – or lucky – they can send you a request to extend their screen time. You can respond to the notification by granting additional screen time for 15 minutes, an hour, or the whole day if you're feeling particularly generous. And, of course, you can choose not to approve their request at all.

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Limit the use of certain apps
It's also possible to limit your child's daily use of certain types of app, such as social networking apps like Instagram or Snapchat. Once they've used up their time allocation for a type of app, they will see a message on-screen telling them so.

When an app is out of bounds, its icon is greyed out. If your child taps on it, they'll see a message telling them they've reached their time limit for that app for that day.

Lockdown in-app purchases
If you're one of those unlucky and, presumably, bankrupted parents who have been left to foot the cost of a hefty phone bill wracked up by their child's in-app purchases, help is at hand.

As with previous versions of Apple's operating system, iOS 12 lets you stop in-app purchases altogether, as well as restricting your child's ability to install new apps. You can also prevent music tracks with explicit lyrics, and films and TV shows with a 15 or 18 rating, from appearing in the iTunes Store and Apple Music. Parents of younger children, especially, may also want to allow access only to websites they have approved.

All the parental controls in Screen Time can be reviewed or edited at any time once they've been set up.

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