Clever Kids Find Loopholes in Parents’ iOS 12 Screen Time Restrictions

Screentime Ios Credit: AppleInsider
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Kids are smarter, more sophisticated and tech-savvy than ever before — and in fact over two-thirds (76 percent) of adolescent-aged minors report owning an iPhone or other mobile device of their own, already.

It should come as no surprise then (given how much time kids have been found to spend immersed in their devices), that they’d also become proficient in how to use, customize, and configure those devices at the systemic level. 

While there’s nothing wrong with an aspiring kid being tech-savvy and knowing their way around a device, it could come at the irking (or humor) of parents to find out their kids have outsmarted them at the “game of tech.”

And that’s exactly what appears to be happening, as a number of children (as young as seven-years-old) have reportedly been finding clever ways of bypassing iOS 12’s parental-imposed Screen Time restrictions.

What Is Screen Time?

One of iOS 12’s biggest features, Screen Time enables iPhone and iPad owners to limit the amount of time they spend using their device in a given day — and even on an app-by-app basis.

The feature was built-into Apple’s iOS 12 software update, and came as a direct response to a choir of concerns from activists and investors that children, in particular, are spending too much time staring into their screens.

Parents of children with iOS 12-compatible devices will be happy to know they can go in and set Screen Time restrictions at any time, which will go into effect when permitted to prevent your child from using certain (or all) apps.

Breaking the Rules

Unfortunately, while Screen Time was created in good faith and theoretically solves the issue it was created to address, some kids are just way too smart these days — and at least two tech-savvy kiddos, in particular, have discovered crafty ways of circumventing their parents’ pre-set Screen Time restrictions.

In fact it wasn’t long after iOS 12 and Screen Time arrived on the scene that clever kids began scouring for ways to work-around their parents’ rules, with the easiest trick being for kids to simply go in and change their device’s time settings back to an earlier hour, before the Screen Time settings kick in.

Others are resorting to more drastic measures, such as the seven-year-old boy who, according to one Reddit forum first spotted by Business Insider, was able to keep his mom wondering..

“When iOS 12 came out, I limited my 7-year old son’s screen time through the family share. For a few days I felt like he was playing a bit more than he should, but I couldn’t figure out why,” Reddit user, u/PropellerGuy, said.

“Finally today, my son revealed his hack: When he runs out of screen time and his games get locked, he heads to App Store, downloads a previously installed (but later removed) game through the cloud icon, and it works without limitations!”

“What can I say,” the user added. “I’m not even mad. That’s impressive.”

Other kids, meanwhile, are preventing their parents from imposing restrictions by going in and setting their own Restrictions Password — thereby preventing their parents from accessing the setting, themselves. Those little rascals!

While these savvy and sophisticated kids are sure to go far in life, not all parents are so unwitting — and some, like my own when I was a little hell-raiser growing up, are smart enough to know that the best security is physical security — which in this case would entail confiscation.

“I know my son is smarter than me,” another parent admitted, adding that “I just tell him when it’s time for a break and have him hand over the iPad the old fashioned way, just like the early settlers did.”

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