Apple’s built-in parental controls aren’t as robust as some third-party apps, but there are plenty of tools to help you safeguard and snoop on young iOS fans. Parental controls are a real boon for those looking to protect kids from online scariness—or to take control over how kids use the internet and their devices, from the home PC to tablets and smartphones.
However, if you’re an Apple family, you may find there are ways to make thing safer without any add-ons. Apple built a lot of tools and features into iOS that can help a beleaguered parental unit get through the day with fewer worries. Nothing beats a frank, face-to-face talk with kids about what is good for them online and what isn’t. But when that doesn’t help, here’s how you can lock down their iPhones for your piece of mind.
This article assumes that you—as the parent or guardian—have full access to your kids’ iOS devices, enough so that you can physically access them and set up limations on what the phone can or cannot do. Instructions are for iOS 10+.
1. SETUP APPLE ID — The first action you generally should perform when your kid gets their own iOS-based device is create an Apple ID (aka an iTunes account) just for them. It’s easier than sharing yours; the trick is to restrict them from doing too much
2. SETUP PASSWORD LOCK WITH 6 DIGITS — Secure the iOS devices at the most basic level, give the device a passcode. Older iOS devices used 4-digit passcodes, like the personal identification number (PIN) you use at the ATM machine. As of iOS 9, the default changed to a six-digit passcode, which is literally 100 times harder to crack
3. SET SPECIAL RESTRICTIONS PASSWORD — On the kid’s iPhone, go to Settings > General > Restrictions > Enable Restrictions. Set up a Restrictions passcode (it’s different from the sign-in passcode—it can only be 4 digits) so that only you can bypass the restrictions you’re about to set.
4. RESTRICT SPECIFIC APPS — Parents may wish to block Safari, Camera, Siri, FaceTime, iTunes Store, making in-app purchases, and more). They can set content type restrictions (for movies, TV shows, books, apps, passwords, even by rating)
5. USER FAMILY SHARING APPROACH FOR SECURITY — If you do have a family of macOS and iOS users (and even iCloud users on Windows), the Family Sharing option makes it easy to share things between up to six users—each user gets their own account, but all the books, music, TV shows, and apps purchased on one account get shared with all the rest, as do things like calendar entries and family photos.
6. SET PRIVACY SAFEGUARDS — if you’re really, truly worried about your kids’ privacy, you probably wouldn’t let your kids online at all. Location awareness, however, is one of those things that gets a little overdone by the various apps you use (and should be set OFF as applicable)
7. TURN OFF SIRI ACTIVE LISTENING — Turn off Siri’s active listening—the feature that makes it more like Amazon’s Echo devices, always eavesdropping for activation words so it can audibly interact.
8. BROWSER HISTORY AS A CONTROL — This is the classic privacy issue all users of any age should know: clear your browser history to prevent snoops from knowing where you went. For the built-in Safari browser, go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data. Then again, don’t share that with your kids if you want to check it yourself to see what they’ve surfed
9. DEFAULT INTERNET SEARCH — While you’re in the Safari settings for your kid’s iPhone, go in and change the search engine to DuckDuckGo (the only one that doesn’t track them),
10. TURN OFF WIDGETS — These little info dumps offered by select apps can throw all sorts of information up on the screen; info that other people can access without even unlocking the phone
11. TURN OFF OR REDUCE APP NOTIFICATIONS — Looking at notifications on an iPhone lock screen is second nature—not only for you and your brood, but also the people looking over your shoulder. Go into Settings & Notifications on your kid’s phone and on an app-by-app basis, you can specify whether any notifications are displayed on the lock screen, in the Notification center, or at all
12. VPN SOFTWARE ADDS PRIVACY — If you don’t know about virtual private networks yet, read Privacy 101: Why You Need a VPN. Realize that you and your kids need a VPN service not only on your PCs, but also on your smartphones, to stay secure. Yes, this is third-party software that will cost you money—but this is important. Every single one of our Best VPN Services supports iOS.
13. FINGERPRINT READER SETTINGS — The Touch ID fingerprint scanner is super convenient, for sure—and if you’ve set up fingerprint access on a kid’s phone, make sure you, the parent or guardian, also have a print or two stored on the device to unlock it.
14. SET AUTOMATIC ERASE DATA FOR LOST PHONE — The final nuke is if the kid’s iPhone is lost or stolen. It happens. A lot. Assuming you’ve implemented the bare minimum of security—a good passcode—you can set up the Erase Data feature
