How to set up parental controls on your iPhone

There was a news in 2013 from England that a 5 year old kid Danny Kitchen blew $2500 on in game purchases in just 10 minutes. This happened because there was no parental control on the iPhone given to the child. So when giving away your iPhone or iPadto your kid to play games or to listen music or to just explore you should set up parental control so that your kid doesn’t land up in some inappropriate situation or feels insecure.

As you are aware that by default when you enter your password on your iPhone or iPad it will not need to be entered again for 15 minutes. Within that time, your children could accidentally download hundreds of pounds worth of in-app purchases and give you a shock on your financial bills.

So change your settings on the iPhone just go to Settings > General > Restrictions

Change the ‘Require Password’ setting to ‘Immediately’.

Now, every time your child goes to buy something, whether it is an app or in-app purchase, they’ll be asked to type in the password before they can progress further.

To stop your kids from having access to the Restrictions menu and changing the settings back specially if your kids are a little older,  you’ll be asked to set up a PIN code.

You can ensure that your child doesn’t download any apps at all by going to the Restrictions menu and changing the ‘Installing Apps’ slider to off (from green to white). Within this menu, you can also turn off Safari, Camera, FaceTime, iTunes, iBookstore, Deleting Apps, Siri and Explicit Language for further control over your child’s access to your iPad or iPhone’s features.

You can also turn in-app purchases off completely from this menu if you want to. You’ll find the on/off slider towards the bottom of the restriction options.

Within the Restrictions menu, you can also prevent kids from downloading content from the iTunes Store that may be inappropriate, by tapping each different type of content (music, movies etc.) and choosing your preferred age rating.

It’s not just within apps or on the iTunes App Store that kids can end up spending their your hard earned money without realizing but even with other online portals. So to prevent a child from being able to access your iPhone or iPad at all, you’ll want to set up a device passcode for sure.

 

To set up a Passcode, go to Settings > General > Passcode Lock and tap ‘Turn Passcode On.’

You can then choose your Passcode. If you slide the ‘Simple Passcode’ slider to off, you’ll be able to type a word rather than the default four-digit number to use as your Passcode.

Apple recommends that, for children over 13, you should create an individual Apple ID for them to use. While this removes the headache of having to turn restrictions on and off every time you want to use it, you will need to switch from your Apple ID to your child’s and vice versa. However, the benefit is that you can ensure that your child’s Apple ID has no credit card on file, meaning there’s no money for them to spend in the first place.

In order to switch between Apple IDs, you’ll need to go to Settings > iTunes & App Stores and then tap on Apple ID to log out.

If you want to give your child a limited amount of money to spend on their own Apple ID, you can buy an iTunes Gift Card or Certificate from the iTunes Store for them to use.

Further still, you can set up an iTunes Monthly Gift to give your child a set amount of money to spend in the iTunes Store each month. The iTunes Monthly Gift can range from $5 to $30 in value, and can be cancelled at any time.

Finally if you do not wish to go for all the restrictions as stated above then the best thing is to keep your iPad or iPhone out of your kids reach completely.