Good evening, So I need recommendations for parental control on an iPhone and iPad for an eleven year old who having been given the chance to self police has failed miserably. At the moment her devices are locked away and it will be a while before they are returned but as she has been found to be being dishonest about who she is communicating with(the person she was communicating with is known to us and isn't a "dangerous stranger", however if she can't be honest about this person we can't trust she is being sensible with actual strangers) and what apps she is using, if / when they are returned. As such we require far more oversight than afforded by ios itself, if anyone has any experience with any of the myriad parental control apps out there I'd appreciate some advice. We aren't looking for discrete surveillance as before the devices are returned it will be made clear what we can control and that for the foreseeable future we will be checking what she is doing and what apps she is trying to use. Thanks Mike
Have you not tried Screentime? It's within iOS, can configure it pretty much down to time/ sites visit, always allowed apps such as learning (my daughter has Calm app, Procreate and messages as always on... everything else needs authorisation after 8PM at night. You can also set an amount of time per app so it allows your youngster to use those apps she loves but once the app time limit has been reached, it only allows continual use via parent request. It's pretty fool proof actually. My son keeps asking at what age I will be turning it off... I reply that when I can trust you to go to bed without the iPad, I can turn Screentime off... never going to happen but I can keep him going until he's 18 lol! You can end up going down a rabbit hole with the amount of things you can configure. If you want to leave the entertainment on whilst the messaging apps are turned off, you can do that. You can also arrange for additional apps to be downloaded by request only so if she does try to find another messaging app to work around the limits, you have authorisation over the downloading of the new app.
This is pretty much the same approach we have with our 12 year old daughter, I'm not really an iOS person so the wife set everything up but basically, she can't install anything without a request being sent to my wife, app times are limited unless they're educational, and everything stops at 11PM iirc unless extended. I'm sure there are apps out there that do a better job but tbh I can't fault the built-in systems.
I'm afraid we were using screentime however we are having issues with the various messaging apps, even with people she is allowed to communicate with we have found lots of deleted messages and conversations plus it is possible to add people who have previously been contacts even if they have been blocked without it flagging on either of our notification. Another issue is that when I try to manage her contacts apple has decided that I need her permission which she denies, this then means conflict as I need physical access to the phone and her code. She has even resorted to a full phone reset in the past (with the help of a friend) to avoid limits, I've changed the settings on find my iPhone etc and blocked this I'm just fed up of wasting my time and hoping there is a better option. If not the pad and phone are staying locked in my old gun safe, I'm fairly certain that will prevent her using them.
