Is it me or is screentime for apple devices rubbish?

[schooloflostsocks]

So yet again DS 13 needed his phone during lesson time at school, I switched off screentime restrictions so he could use it and then forgot to switch it back on. I feel like I need training in how to use screentime better.

Why is it so useless if you switch it off and on again, you seem to have to set it all up from scratch again and put 'block at end' on every single restriction manually. I hate it.

please share your screentime wisdom. Thanks

Buy a cheap Nokia dumbphone.

Yes we did start with a Nokia. It would be pretty devastating for my Y9 not to be on WhatsApp with his friends though, now we’ve finally allowed it I can see how much gets organised on there re their social lives

We've given up with Apple parental controls. They are not reliable.
Youngest has an android with family link. Oldest has an iPhone but can't trust the parental lock. No snap or tik took.

iPad is on a parent account which has it's own challenges, but surprised use only and is currently hidden due to overuse.

There's should be more public outcry about apple's useless parental controls. Including the requirement for another Apple device to manage them.

@Rollercoaster1920 so what do you do with your eldest.

I find it weird how little parents seem to be complaining about this. Not sure how they can in any way be effectively monitoring what is happening online. I have regular training on this as a teacher and it’s horrific what kids are being exposed to.

Eldest is a mid-teen, we still have Apple parental controls but don't really trust them. But do trust our child a fair amount, they are good at going to bed, not glued to the phone generally. They do not have Snap or Tiktok.

So glad I found this thread! My kids don’t have phones yet but they do have access to iPads which is my BIGGEST parenting regret. The parental controls are utterly, utterly shit. I thought it was just that their iPads are really old but maybe not. My eldest just turned 11 and this has made my mind up that he won’t be getting an iPhone for secondary. Sorry no advice op just solidarity. Apple have enough resources to fix the problem they just don’t want to because it keeps kids addicted to their devices.

I’m bumping this again this evening in case anyone else has any recommendations for third party parental control apps. In particular I want all browser access blocked and I want to be able to switch apps on and off as I choose, also to set windows in which access is open (rather than 30 mins per day I want to say between X and X O clock. This is not possible on apple screentime

Just found this pretty horrifying thread

reactions to this kind of thing are always ‘get a dumb phone’ or ‘take it away’ which is not really viable for many reasons

Qustodio will do this.

Hi OP - my eldest is y6 so we are starting to get the requests for a phone and a couple of her friends have them. I don’t have any answers but I have found your thread helpful. One tip I was given was to use AI how to get around phone restrictions - as that is what your teen will do! If AI gives you an answer you teen will be able to do it.
things are changing but I’m worried it’s too slow for my eldest. We are going to explore the hybrid phones that have been made specifically for tweens/teens and also considering a dumb phone.
Could you get rid of Apple altogether and replace with hybrid models? Or is it too late?

Would the BePresent app work for this? I don’t have kids with phones (she’s only 6) but I downloaded it myself to help with my addiction. The app blocker works really well for me, it can’t be changed remotely though, so kid couldn’t be at school asking you to change the access. Might be handy alongside another app / control.

Get Android smart phones.
My DCs have them and the only issue is where we allow access to Chrome for homework and we have to allow the BBC domain and my DS just plays games on there. But we just shut down Chrome when he's done with homework.
Family link is so much better than Screen Time. They have Motorola phones which were £70 or similar.

I'm looking at whether to try family link - but it says the child can manage their own account from 13?? Surely that is the age when you actually need more parental control as they stop thinking you know best!

My ds have a school managed ipad so phones are never needed at school or for homework. The ipad is restricted so it just has school stuff plus netflix/ Disney/iplayer allowed. Parents can choose if they want less restrictions for older teens. This is really helpful - my dc use it for homework/art apps and sometimes watching something. Phone is used for WhatsApp and Spotify mainly. I check it most days to read the messages. However, I'm aware that my dc is only in year 7 and won't always be so obedient.

They get sent an email asking if they want to. We deleted it before DS saw it.

Just putting my thoughts in here, we had to very quickly learn about screentime and app controls .

Its useless!

I have set screen times of 1 hour for youtube and 1 hour for roblox. Never ever works, never gives them the time. If they request more time and you accidentally click "all day" you cant change it. And why cant i just choose the amount of time they get instead of it only being No or 15mins or all day - what if i want to allow 45mins!!

The olny time it semi works is when i put in set hours so eg, between 9am-8pm. but when i set certain contacts that they can always contact even on downtime it doesnt work.

We put, every single restriction known to man on tiktok, i went through forums, chat gpt, tiktok, and researched every single way to restrict their tiktok account so that they only saw "approved" vidoes from a very set and specific list i had created. I blocked every single vidoe that included harmful content with a set of about 1000 key words and sub categories, i refershed their whole tiktoks and interacted with positive videos.

And do you know what, IT DIDNT WORK, they were still seeing self harm, suicide related, sad/harmful thoughts videos, their feeds were flooded with it.

In the end after about a month i cancelled every social media app, they only have whatsap now. No snap,tiktok, insta - nothing.

The kids are better off, itwas rough, i didnt think it could be done espeically with the 13 year old, turns out they adapt quickly and are MUCH happier.

The phone, social media and app companies do not care about our children, they care about making a profit and if it wrecks our chidrens mental health s be it.

Why are you switching if off and on again instead of allowing access for 15 minutes or an hour?

Apple parental controls work well for me. I have screen time switched on all day for my 12 year old. Some apps are allowed all day such as phone messages and his banking app. If he wants access to anything else he sends a request and I authorise it. No need to switch controls on and off.

I find the apple screen time ok, but not quite robust enough in some aspects, I like that they have to send requests to download apps and this seems to work well and their devices shut down when they should. But one issue I noticed was I don’t let them have TikTok app, but they could still access it and view things from it via the browser even though I put it on the list of websites to restrict access too, this feature doesn’t seem to work well at all. There have also been times when my dc have sent me a request for an app and I’ve not received it which can be frustrating for them. One thing that I think does help keep screentime working properly is making sure all the devices, including your own are updated to the latest of.

I feel like if you want truly robust parental controls you need to pay unfortunately, the free ones will only really do the bare minimum. In the end I started using Bitdefender parental control along side screen time which seems far more thorough and actually blocks certain sites from being accessed.

You have to download an app to their devices and tweak a few settings so it works properly but it was very simple and it also can’t be deleted by them, it simply won’t allow it. I’ve tried it myself many times and not managed to find a way, my dc also know that if they mess with it they lose access to their phones and tablets altogether which would be far worse than being allowed them with restrictions in place. When they go on the app it just shows them the amount of time they’ve been using their devices for that day and they can’t log out without a code.

The settings can be tweaked by me remotely, you can add specific sites to block or allow and set time limits. It also tells me if it’s not working properly on any of their devices. It seems pretty fool proof, my kids haven’t found a work around so far and we’ve been using it for nearly a year now. I use Bitdefender for antivirus on my laptop and it comes included with that, I’m not sure if you can get the parental control features on its own but it’s definitely been worth it for the peace of mind.

That sounds like I’m working for them or something but I promise I don’t😆 I’m just a parent trying to navigate all this stuff as best I can whilst keeping my children safe online.

It is utter crap. My common refrain is that apple’s employment model discourages actual parents from working at the design level. If they had better work life balance, their parental controls would be better. Actually much of their UI would be better.

Good to see this thread bump up again. I had forgotten about it, but last week was trying to work out what was going on on our child's account. Even the odd UI for selecting aps to add / remove from a screentime restriction wound me up.
Apple hardware is very good, the parental controls are not.