App that controls a child's phone use?

March 11, 2017 9:18 AM

geegollygosh recently asked a similar question though for an adult's personal use. I'd like something that enables a parent's control over her child's phone use.
posted by partner to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

What do you want to control about it, and what kind of phone is it?
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:26 AM on March 11, 2017

Response by poster: I want to prevent the iPhone's use in the morning hours, while the child is still at home, before school.
posted by partner at 9:32 AM on March 11, 2017

I'm not an iPhone users but I've been told that there are extensive parental settings on them. You apparently need to have your kid's phone be listed as your family and then there are dozens of ways to limit them.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304
posted by k8t at 9:55 AM on March 11, 2017

Best answer: Parental controls, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't let you have time-bracketed access controls. This article gives you an overview of some of the things you can do with parental controls. So if the things your child wants to do includes the internet, you can do that (and your wireless provider may have additional controls available, worth calling them). If it involves web browsing, you can do that. If she just wants to play a locally non-networked game, you can't really do that. There are timer type apps that let you allow a child to use a phone for X number of minutes and no longer. You can look at power apps like this one to get an idea of what sorts of things are even possible within the iPhone environment. You can note that "control applications" is an Android-only thing.
posted by jessamyn at 10:30 AM on March 11, 2017

Yeah, our method for this is "the iPad spends the night charging in my room." Crude but effective. I wish there were a better method!
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 10:49 AM on March 11, 2017

On my kid's Android tablet we use an app called Screen Time. There's one app for the kid's device and another for the parent's, and it's a yearly subscription model (there's a free trial period sop you can try it out). It does All The Things, from blocking certain apps always and forever, to being able to set a daily limit, to being able to give it extra screen time door the competition of certain set tasks. It's pretty fancy and since our boy is only four we don't use a lot of the features yet, but it works very well.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:28 PM on March 11, 2017

Qustodio works well for this.
posted by dacoit at 2:24 PM on March 11, 2017

We use the OurPact app. It's an app that goes on the parent's phone (or browser) and then some controls that go on the child's phone, and you can make a schedule. It "disappears" all the installed apps when the phone is blocked. You can also turn apps on and off at will. It doesn't effect the basic apps on the phone, like Messenger, but all "installed" apps. We combine this with the iPad living on a charging station between times.
posted by slightlybewildered at 3:25 PM on March 11, 2017