How to Make Your iPhone or iPad Safe for Kids with Parental Restrictions

How to Make Your iPhone or iPad Safe for Kids with Parental Restrictions
Text Size
- +

Toggle Dark Mode

As a parent, you probably have enough to worry about and the idea your kid could run up a bill by simply playing Candy Crush Saga on your iPhone makes your head hurt. I remember the days when the only entertainment available on a mobile device was the blocky Snake game, and it was enough for kids. Hand a child a Nokia flip phone from the late ’90s running Snake nowadays and you will either get a confused stare or even a laugh.

It’s always our goal to make your life easier, so let’s take a look at how to use Restrictions to lock down your iPhone or iPad to make it safe for your child. After you’re done with this article, worrying about what your kid is doing on your iPhone or iPad will be a thing of the past.

Restrictions 3

What Are Restrictions?

With Restrictions, you can lock up various areas and apps on an iPhone or iPad such as Safari, Camera, FaceTime, Siri or the App Store (including in-app purchases). Beyond apps, other helpful settings may also be locked down. For example, you can limit volume so your kid won’t go deaf listening to music on their Beats headphones.

Restrictions 1

Important privacy features are also available in Restrictions. A great example is being able to turn off access to contacts. This way you don’t have to worry about your child sending text messages to everyone on your contacts list.

To put it simply, Restrictions allow you to block your kid from anything and everything you don’t want them to have access to, making the iPhone and iPad much safer than competing devices.

Setting Up Restrictions

To turn on Restrictions, go to Settings/General/Restrictions and tap Enable Restrictions. You will be prompted to create a password which you must have to turn off Restrictions later, so make sure you remember it. If you lose or forget it, you’ll have to erase your entire device and set it up all over again to remove the Restrictions password.

Restrictions 2

After a password is setup, you’ll be able to go through each section and tweak restrictions however you like. In the Allow section you can restrict access to the apps you don’t want your kid to be able to use. However, this section only allows you to restrict access to Apple’s built in apps and not third party apps. If there is a third party app you absolutely don’t want your child to use, the only way to restrict access is deleting the app from the device and then turn off the Installing Apps option in Restrictions so the app cannot be re-downloaded.

Perhaps the best feature here is being able to cut off access to in-app purchases. It’s hard for adults to avoid going on a spending spree while playing FarmVille or Candy Crush, so you can imagine the danger of letting a kid play. There have been kids who have spent thousands of dollars on in-app purchases, so enabling this feature could save you from a serious headache.

It is a necessary need in parenting to be equipped with the tools required to calm our sometimes fussy children. As I’m sure many of you have experienced, an iPhone or iPad can mesmerize a child for quite a long time, but the worry of what they may do while on the device can be overwhelming. Setting up Restrictions on the device may be the ticket to eliminate your stress every time you hand over your iPhone or iPad to your child.

Learn More: Use These 5 Simple iPhone Tricks to Save Precious Time

Sponsored
Social Sharing