* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Monday, June 9, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Cisco Partners with Monumental Sports & Entertainment to Power New D.C. Arena – Cisco Newsroom

    Cisco Teams Up with Monumental Sports & Entertainment to Revolutionize the New D.C. Arena Experience

    Middle Eastern Entertainment Headlines at 5:49 a.m. GMT – Yahoo

    Exciting Updates from the Middle Eastern Entertainment Scene!

    Ceramic Dalmatian Entertainment is WLAF’s Business of the Week – WLAF

    Spotlight on Success: Ceramic Dalmatian Entertainment Shines as This Week’s Featured Business!

    Brass Lion Entertainment unveils co-op action RPG Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver – VentureBeat

    Unleash Your Inner Warrior: Discover the Co-Op Action RPG Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver!

    Entertainment lineup released for 2025 Mississippi State Fair – WAPT

    Exciting Entertainment Lineup Unveiled for the 2025 Mississippi State Fair!

    After Denzel Washington Said He Would Be In Black Panther 3, Ryan Coogler Explained Why He’s ‘Fine’ With That Information Being Revealed So Early – Yahoo

    Ryan Coogler Shares Why He’s Cool with Denzel Washington’s Black Panther 3 Reveal!

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Technology, Labor Rights, and Political Power in Kenya and Across Africa – Tech Policy Press

    How Technology is Shaping Labor Rights and Political Power Across Africa

    Reeves to Announce £86 Billion for Science and Technology in Spending Review – Bloomberg

    Reeves Set to Unveil Groundbreaking £86 Billion Investment in Science and Technology!

    Innovation at Scale: How P&G Transforms Business Through Technology – Procter & Gamble

    Revolutionizing Business: P&G’s Bold Journey into Technological Innovation

    Drag racer survives frightening airborne crash at World Wide Technology Raceway – FOX 2

    Drag racer survives frightening airborne crash at World Wide Technology Raceway – FOX 2

    Apple Watch and the future of wearable technology in healthcare – MSN

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: The Future of Wearable Technology with Apple Watch

    ECS Professor Pankaj K. Jha Receives NSF Grant to Develop Quantum Technology – Syracuse University News

    Unlocking the Future: ECS Professor Pankaj K. Jha Secures NSF Grant for Groundbreaking Quantum Technology Development

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Cisco Partners with Monumental Sports & Entertainment to Power New D.C. Arena – Cisco Newsroom

    Cisco Teams Up with Monumental Sports & Entertainment to Revolutionize the New D.C. Arena Experience

    Middle Eastern Entertainment Headlines at 5:49 a.m. GMT – Yahoo

    Exciting Updates from the Middle Eastern Entertainment Scene!

    Ceramic Dalmatian Entertainment is WLAF’s Business of the Week – WLAF

    Spotlight on Success: Ceramic Dalmatian Entertainment Shines as This Week’s Featured Business!

    Brass Lion Entertainment unveils co-op action RPG Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver – VentureBeat

    Unleash Your Inner Warrior: Discover the Co-Op Action RPG Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver!

    Entertainment lineup released for 2025 Mississippi State Fair – WAPT

    Exciting Entertainment Lineup Unveiled for the 2025 Mississippi State Fair!

    After Denzel Washington Said He Would Be In Black Panther 3, Ryan Coogler Explained Why He’s ‘Fine’ With That Information Being Revealed So Early – Yahoo

    Ryan Coogler Shares Why He’s Cool with Denzel Washington’s Black Panther 3 Reveal!

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Technology, Labor Rights, and Political Power in Kenya and Across Africa – Tech Policy Press

    How Technology is Shaping Labor Rights and Political Power Across Africa

    Reeves to Announce £86 Billion for Science and Technology in Spending Review – Bloomberg

    Reeves Set to Unveil Groundbreaking £86 Billion Investment in Science and Technology!

    Innovation at Scale: How P&G Transforms Business Through Technology – Procter & Gamble

    Revolutionizing Business: P&G’s Bold Journey into Technological Innovation

    Drag racer survives frightening airborne crash at World Wide Technology Raceway – FOX 2

    Drag racer survives frightening airborne crash at World Wide Technology Raceway – FOX 2

    Apple Watch and the future of wearable technology in healthcare – MSN

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: The Future of Wearable Technology with Apple Watch

    ECS Professor Pankaj K. Jha Receives NSF Grant to Develop Quantum Technology – Syracuse University News

    Unlocking the Future: ECS Professor Pankaj K. Jha Secures NSF Grant for Groundbreaking Quantum Technology Development

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Apple’s parental controls are no good for parents or kids

April 17, 2024
in Science
Apple’s parental controls are no good for parents or kids
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Last week, my family and I–like so many others in the U.S.–hopped in a car to try and catch sight of a total eclipse. And, like so many other parents, I planned to distract my kid for some part of this lengthy adventure with an iPad.

As my kid is still under two, there hasn’t been a lot of time spent with screens, aside from occasionally “playing” a game on our phones or watching some videos of trains. This marked the first time I planned to actually hand over a whole device–albeit still with the idea of just watching some downloaded videos–and I found as I set up the iPad what likely a legion of parents before me has also discovered: setting up an Apple device for a kid is kind of annoying.

I’ve been covering Apple for almost 20 years, so you’d be forgiven for thinking this wouldn’t shock me, but the simple truth is that, not unlike The Matrix, this is something you have to experience for yourself. Ultimately, I concluded that Apple should really improve this experience for all of us time- and attention-strapped parents in various ways.

Everything is permissible

Let’s start by saying that Apple does have an extensive set of parental controls baked into its operating systems, all now collected under the aegis of Screen Time. Ostensibly this set of features not only allows parents to monitor how much time their kids spend using devices, but also controls the limits of which apps can be used, which settings can be changed, and so on.

All to the good, but as I–again, a veteran technology journalist of almost two decades–embarked upon setting this all up, one thing quickly became clear: it is a pain. By default, everything is on and allowed, even when the iCloud account you login to is a child’s account (more on which in a bit).

One thing that would be helpful here is some kind of kids profile, where permissions are locked down by default, allowing parents to selectively enable features they want kids to have access to. This also makes sense from the perspective of enabling more features as kids get older. It’d also be handy if it was an ad hoc mode you could go into, rather than having to spend the time setting up all the various permissions, the same way that Netflix has a kids profile that you can log into with just kids content. Reduce the friction by removing all the fiddling.

That’s not to say such a feature would be enough, but it would be a good jumping-off point.

ID, please

Having survived the eclipse trip without a major technology or child-related breakdown, I decided to start poking further at the setup to prepare for more involved future travel. At which point it seemed like the best approach was to bite the bullet and set up an Apple ID for the kid.

iOS 17 create Apple ID

Apple tries to make it easy to create an Apple ID for a child, but the process can be buggy.

iOS 17 create Apple ID

Apple tries to make it easy to create an Apple ID for a child, but the process can be buggy.

Apple

iOS 17 create Apple ID

Apple tries to make it easy to create an Apple ID for a child, but the process can be buggy.

Apple

Apple

Apple, again to its credit, tries to make this process easy. If you have Family Sharing enabled, you can create a child account that links the Apple ID to your family, giving the kid access to shared purchases, but also in some regions controlling how certain features work.

Unfortunately, the setup process was, for me, rife with bugs. After trying to create the child account several times on my phone, each time slowly typing in a password (because I couldn’t use iCloud Keychain to easily autofill one or paste one into the field), I was repeatedly greeted with an error message telling me simply that the account could not be created. Eventually, I gave up and tried on my Mac, wherein I had better luck–except I either mistakenly accepted the default email address created for me or the system never provided me an option to change it.

Changing it to the correct email address proved likewise a chore, requiring an authorization email to me as the parent which took so long to arrive that I thought it had failed; I canceled the request and tried to resubmit it and when I then received the email and clicked on the approval link, I was told that it was invalid…because it turned out it was the email from the first request. (Not to mention the involvement of some truly terrible user experience.) This is less a critique of the setup process, admittedly, than its reliability, but reliability is key: I would not have faulted most people for giving up after the second or third time it failed.

At long last, I got everything sorted out and had an ID in place. So back I went to the iPad to put the two of them together.

Never the twain shall meet

Wherein I discovered that when I logged into the child account I had to go through and turn off all the permissions all over again (with the exception of content restrictions, which did seem to transfer over from the Apple ID configuration). This seems a little ridiculous, given that the Apple ID account is marked as being for a child–surely it would, once again, make more sense to have permissions disabled by default or, at the very least, honor the permissions I’d already configured.

Even beyond the permission issue, however, there are other challenges with handing an iPad to a young kid. For example, in the case of having mine watch a video, there’s always the chance of them accidentally touching a control or turning the iPad’s screen off. Fortunately, you can avoid that with the Guided Access accessibility feature, which is handy, but also kind of a pain to set up, since it requires you to choose which areas of the screen (or other hardware features) are off-limits and set up another passcode (on top of the device and Screen Time passcodes). As an accessibility feature, it’s pretty good, but as a feature for parents, it feels like it could use some simplicity to encourage its usage.

Perhaps the biggest weak spot in Screen Time, however, is the use of the passcode. Yes, it’s good that making changes requires authorization…but a 4-digit passcode? In this economy? Apple’s been long pushing people towards 6-digit if not fully alphanumeric passcodes for their devices—I assure you, it’s not hard for a kid to suss out four numbers: we parents are often all too frazzled for quality OPSEC.

I’m well aware that this situation is only going to get more challenging the older my kid gets: not only pushing for more autonomy and more capability but–if my own youth is any indication–actively trying to work out how to get around the restrictions in place, out of curiosity if nothing else. While technology isn’t the only or even best way to deal with that, it would certainly help if Apple offered tools a little better tailored to the particular challenges of parenting in the digital age.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : MacWorld – https://www.macworld.com/article/2305919/apple-parental-controls-need-improvement.html

Tags: Apple’sParentalscience
Previous Post

This Switch Dock Charger Brick is ready to level up your gaming for just $36

Next Post

Dashlane review: Passwords and plenty more

Ecology expands Washington state’s drought emergency – Columbia Basin Herald

June 9, 2025
Jane Goodall: ‘We must let local wisdom and science be ou… – observer.co.uk

Jane Goodall: ‘We must let local wisdom and science be ou… – observer.co.uk

June 9, 2025
Nanowires replace lost retinal cells – Science | AAAS

Nanowires Spark Breakthrough in Restoring Lost Retinal Cells and Vision

June 9, 2025
Cancer Daily Horoscope Today (June 21 – July 22) June 9, 2025: Lifestyle will improve! – India Today

Cancer Daily Horoscope for June 9, 2025: Get Ready for Exciting Lifestyle Changes!

June 9, 2025
Luka Mijatovic on Qualifying for World Champs: “I didn’t want to put any pressure on myself” – SwimSwam

Luka Mijatovic Opens Up on His World Championships Qualifying: “I Didn’t Want to Put Any Pressure on Myself

June 9, 2025
North America Creator Economy Market Size | CAGR of 19% – Market.us

North America’s Creator Economy Poised for Explosive 19% Growth

June 9, 2025

Three Trailblazing Women Celebrate Victory with Prestigious Frank Prize in Performing Arts

June 9, 2025

Hospice Workers Unite to Transform Care at University of Vermont Health Network

June 9, 2025
Immigrants’ courthouse arrests in NYC spur fear, calls for investigation – Spectrum News NY1

Immigrants’ courthouse arrests in NYC spur fear, calls for investigation – Spectrum News NY1

June 9, 2025
Technology, Labor Rights, and Political Power in Kenya and Across Africa – Tech Policy Press

How Technology is Shaping Labor Rights and Political Power Across Africa

June 9, 2025

Categories

Archives

June 2025
MTWTFSS
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 
« May    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (678)
  • Economy (692)
  • Entertainment (21,597)
  • General (15,289)
  • Health (9,734)
  • Lifestyle (696)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (693)
  • Politics (699)
  • Science (15,911)
  • Sports (21,193)
  • Technology (15,678)
  • World (677)

Recent News

Ecology expands Washington state’s drought emergency – Columbia Basin Herald

June 9, 2025
Jane Goodall: ‘We must let local wisdom and science be ou… – observer.co.uk

Jane Goodall: ‘We must let local wisdom and science be ou… – observer.co.uk

June 9, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version