I hope that Apple delays this function because they want to make it more thoughtful. To my mind, child safety is the most important thing for every parent. As for me, I always take care of the safety of my child. If you know how much time I spend just choosing a kindergarten. The best variant that I've found was Infant Day Care Brooklyn. I think that this place has all the needs. Check it out https://littlescholarsnyc.com/ if you are faced with such a problem too.
Perhaps there's still an opportunity to provide this service - for it presents a really unique business opportunity:
* Apple gets to see how its youngest customers, and future purchasers, interact with their products. How are they actually being used? What are the real frustrations?
* Apple can provide educational services. Music, art, mathematics, engineering - it can go a long way to making these kids life-long learners.
* Bonus points for having a pediatrician on staff. No need to take time off for a sick kid.
* After school care with pickup from local schools would be a huge benefit. Imagine your children being picked up from school and brought to an engaging environment where they can learn and play?
* Ditto for a summer program.
Taking care of daily life issues go a long way to proving peace of mind and allowing one to focus and engage fully while at work. That's why so many companies provide food service, laundry service, workout/health facilities, etc. I'm thinking there's a huge opportunity here.
Probably because it wasn’t really possible before. Now there is a lot of technology making that easy. One of Apple’s big use cases that they sell is the ability to streamline being an overprotective parent
This feature is a big plus for parents. It's hard to appreciate how hard it is to protect kids online if you don't have kids yourself. I get that those without kids will find it intrusive, but it sounds like these feature are opt-in.
I consider iOS to be the best platform for kids today. That said, Apple: if you're listening: please tighten up parental controls around time limits and re-loading apps!
Yes that's right. That's why the above parent comment looked for an app that enables parents to make sure the content and software is safe for their kids. It's also why the app store is problematic since it makes it more difficult for adults to choose software and content appropriate for their children. You two have a lot in common.
Probably need a lite version for families too. I was wasting time updating each kid's Screentime settings hands-on-device before realizing if I got them AppleIDs I change settings remotely.
I am not astonished iOS lacks parental controls but admit they would be useful.
Establishing rules for my toddler is relatively easy when in the context of a physical object (e.g. don't touch the TV, you can only read books or do puzzles during quiet time).
The same toddler has a MUCH harder time recognizing the distinction when dealing with different apps on a single physical device. If I leave two devices in a room and tell him not to touch one, I'll get compliance. If I give him access to a device but tell he that he can't watch movies, compliance drops and he exhibits much less awareness that he broke a rule.
I don't fault apple at all for the lack of parental controls, but do see a use if they were included.
I am not sure how you don’t see that asking the most influential phone maker in the world to focus on the effect of its devices on children won’t numerically improve outcomes? Of course it makes sense to focus on the market leader that influences the industry rather than marginal down market devices.
Also, I don’t think apple’s controls are all that good. MacOS X has quiet time for kids, etc. I don’t think iOS has that. Android also allows more invasive apps to take over more of the OS if parents so desire to exert more control over the device. You can see some of the rigmarole that this parent control app has to deal with on iOS: https://screentimelabs.com/help/ios-differences/
Great idea and name. My only criticism is for it to be really smart I'd love to be able to reply without having to login to maily. That would really become like a safe version of email. Another would be for the child to be able to request to add a contact (like a friend) where the parent is sent a notification with the email and a note.
The other thought would be an iPhone app. The iPad was definitely a smart place to start with but I know a lot of kids (maybe slightly older) have iPod Touches with parental settings on, these are replacing the Nintendo DS and goes everywhere with them.
That’s a lot of weasel words. In practical terms, the only measure that matters, it’s safer to hand kids a locked down iPad than let them browse anything on a stock Windows 10 or Mac OS machine than let them download via the iOS App Store.
See, I agree with this mentality. I would actually respect Apple a lot if they had just come out and told parents to "just take the phone away" rather than launching a half implemented feature and then forgetting about it.
Unfortunately there's no way that would ever happen. Even if Apple PR would ever allow such a statement to be made, which it wouldn't, requiring parents to do some actual parenting might provoke major unrest.
None of this would be an issue if you could run whatever app you want on an iOS device.
There's many uses cases for kids that are not nefarious in nature. Say a parental lock feature that goes above and beyond what Apple provides out of the box.
I would be happy if Apple could at least implement time restrictions like the Parental Controls on MacOS. That's been available for what, almost a decade now?
The closest thing that's available is something that blocks traffic at the router level, like Circle. But even that isn't perfect, since kids can still use local apps that don't need full network access.
I've also tried some of the MDM programs like OurPact, but the UI is awful and they do a lousy job of implementing it on the client side, probably in part because of what Apple allows to be turned off and what they do not.
What I am waiting for is for Apple to come up with a version of an ID that is "safe" to send out into the world with a handicapped child that is incapable of doing her own updates, but that would allow the folks doing her care to ONLY do updates and not purchase items (on purpose or accidentally) that I will end up having to cover. Of course I find it particularly evil that some of the Sesame Street apps allow in-app purchases. I haven't seen a company rip off adults through their children like that since the old Columbia House Record Club...
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