The most critical setting on your child’s new iPhone or iPad (and it’s not what you think)

I was just reviewing the settings of a hand-me-down iPad that a parent I’ve been working with set up for her 8-year-old son. She thought she had set up everything correctly but when she was checking the Screen Time report, she saw that her son had been spending a lot of time on YouTube even though she never approved the YouTube app for her son’s iPad.

She actually had gone through Apple's onboarding flow for child devices and picked the recommended option at every step. First she reset her old iPad to set it up fresh for her son (many people skip the step for hand-me-downs, I’ll have a future post on why this is a bad idea). She set the right age at the content checklist. The checklist is a useful tool to very quickly set up age-appropriate content filters for your device.

Age-Appropriate content settings on iOS.

And most important to her, she set up "Ask To Buy" which requires approval for all new app installs and purchases so that she could manage what apps were on the iPad.

So where did her son get YouTube from? The answer is Safari. Ask to Buy is a great feature but unrestricted access to a web browser is its biggest loophole (there are a bunch of others which I'll go over in a future post). She had limited adult websites, but every other site on the internet was accessible. This is one of the most common issues I see when working with parents. It's all too easy to sign up for Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram from a mobile web browser, all you need is an email address or phone number.

What could a young child even do with a web browser?

It's reasonable to wonder "what is my son/daughter going to do with Safari? They have no idea how to use it or what to look for and it's hard to imagine them getting into something bad."

But the Safari home page for an 8 year old's iPad has links to Bing, Google, and Yahoo which are purpose built to make it easy to find anything online. The Yahoo link puts an 8 year old (with all the age-appropriate content settings checked set) one tap away from this:

The Fix - Limit Web Browsing

I always recommend putting restrictions on Safari for kids with iPads and those new to iPhones. There are two approaches.

1. Completely disable Safari

This is what I usually recommend with younger kids who are using iPads as entertainment devices. App content is much safer and you can approve everything that goes on the device. If you find that they are going to start using the iPad for school work, maybe consider the next option. This can be done in Screen Time > Tap on your child's profile > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Allowed Apps & Features. Here you can disable many default apps (Swelp Zero can help you disable the apps not in this list).

2. Create an allow list

An allow list blocks every website except those that you explicitly enable. This can be set up from Settings > Screen Time > Your child's profile > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Store, Web, Siri & Game Center Content > Web Content and then selecting "Only Approved Websites." Here you can add any website that you want to allow your child to visit and every other site will be blocked by default.

When your child tries to visit a site that is not approved, they will be restricted. You can override this with your screen time passcode (another reminder to keep your passcode secret!) but currently it's not possible in iOS to remotely approve new websites like you can with apps.

Conclusion

I hope this post was helpful! For a limited time, we are doing free consultations to help you make sure that your children’s iPhones and iPads are setup properly. To sign up, send us an email at hello@getswelp.com and feel free to send over any other questions you have about screen time.