Screen Time on your child's iPhone

A night lock, time limits, and the things that always keep working. It is all built into the phone already, it just needs to be set up right.

The problem

Agreements about screens are hard to keep, for children and for adults. The apps are built by very skilled people to hold on to us, and a child who promises to put the phone down at eight is fighting uneven odds. We wanted the phone itself to carry the boundaries, especially in the evening, so they don't rest on a child's willpower or turn into daily nagging.

The solution

Screen Time is built into every iPhone and free. Set up well, it gives you a night lock, time limits for games and social apps, limits on who can reach your child, content filters, and a list of things that always work, like calls and the school app. Through Family Sharing you manage it all from your own phone. For younger children you can also combine it with Assistive Access, which locks the phone down to only the apps you chose. The time limits you set here keep applying there too.

Good to know first

We want to be honest about what Screen Time is and isn't, so you start with the right expectations.

• Screen Time is a fence, not a wall. Workarounds circulate among kids, and you close the most common ones in step 7.
• Everything rests on the passcode. If your child knows it, or can guess it, every limit is just a suggestion.
• The setup is more cumbersome than it should be, not always intuitive, and not free of bugs. One example we ran into ourselves: with the web locked to a list of approved sites, entering the passcode to approve a single new site opened the whole web for several minutes. Double-check your settings, especially after an iOS update.
• The settings help the everyday, but they don't replace the conversation about why the boundaries exist. Set them together with your child if you can.

Want to try?

Allow about half an hour for the full setup, less if you skip step 7. You need your own iPhone and your child's. We'll walk through it together, step by step.

1. 1
   Connect through Family Sharing

   Open Settings on your own phone, tap your name at the top and choose Family Sharing. Add your child, with a child Apple Account if they don't have one yet.

   Your child's profile becomes your control panel: Screen Time lives there, and there you turn on Ask to Buy, so new apps and purchases go through you. Everything below is done from here, on your own phone, and the passcode never needs to be typed on your child's.

   Your child's profile under Family Sharing. Screen Time and Ask to Buy are the two rows that do the work.

   Done, next step
2. 2
   Set the Screen Time passcode

   Open Screen Time in your child's profile and turn it on. Set a Screen Time passcode: four digits that can't be guessed. Not a birthday, and not the phone's regular unlock code. You can change it later under Manage Screen Time, Change Screen Time Passcode.

   It matters that your child never learns the passcode. Otherwise the responsibility lands back on the child, and the whole point is to help hold the balance against content designed to be irresistible. A bit like handing a child an enormous bag of sweets and asking them to eat one a day. The passcode lets you carry that responsibility instead.

   The passcode carries every limit below. It stays with you.

   Done, next step
3. 3
   Downtime, the night lock

   If you only do one thing in this guide, do this one. Under Screen Time, choose Downtime, turn on Scheduled and set the hours, for example 7 pm to 8 am on school nights. Customise Days gives the weekend its own hours.

   Turn on Block at Downtime. Without it, the night lock is just a reminder. With it, the phone locks, and your child can ask for more time, which you approve from your phone. For a freer evening there is Ignore Downtime Until Schedule, your pause button.

   During downtime only calls and the apps you choose in step 5 keep working. Pair it with a charger in the hallway, so the phone sleeps outside the bedroom.

   The schedule plus Block at Downtime is the night lock itself.

   Done, next step
4. 4
   App Limits

   Under App Limits, choose Add Limit. Prefer whole categories over single apps, for example Games and Social Networking, so the limit also covers apps downloaded tomorrow. Set the time together with your child if you can, and turn on Block at End of Limit, otherwise the limit is just a reminder.

   Two more things worth knowing:

   • Apps like Messages and FaceTime cannot be switched off anywhere else. A time limit here is the way to frame them, for example 30 minutes a day.
   • A limit can be set to zero. An app at 0 seconds is effectively locked for your child, but you can always open it with the passcode. We run Safari that way: off in the everyday, but available to you when a sign-in or an errand needs the web.

   0 s means locked for the child but openable with your passcode. Messages gets a reasonable daily ration instead.

   Done, next step
5. 5
   Always Allowed

   A limit only holds if the phone still does the important things. Under Always Allowed you add what should never be locked: Maps, the school app, the transit app. Phone is always on the list and can't be removed, for good reason.

   This is also the list that applies during downtime. Then calls and these apps work, nothing else. So there is no everyday reason to ask for the passcode, and no reason for you to hand it out.

   This is what keeps working when everything else is locked.

   Done, next step
6. 6
   Communication Limits

   Under Communication Limits you decide who your child can reach and be reached by, in Phone, FaceTime and Messages. Known emergency numbers always work.

   During Screen Time: choose Contacts Only, so unknown numbers don't get through. During Downtime: choose Specific Contacts and add the parents. Then you always reach each other in the evening, while friends wait until breakfast.

   Turn on Manage your child's Contacts for your child, so the contact list is yours to edit from your phone. Turn off Allow Contact Editing if the list should be entirely yours.

   Daytime: contacts only. Evening and night: only you. Emergency numbers always work.

   Done, next step
7. 7
   Content and Privacy Restrictions

   The biggest step, worth ten minutes. Under Content & Privacy Restrictions, turn it on and go through four things:

   • iTunes & App Store Purchases: set Deleting Apps to Don't Allow, so an app with a time limit can't be deleted and reinstalled with a reset counter. New apps and purchases go through Ask to Buy.
   • Allowed Apps & Features: switch off what your child doesn't need at all, like Mail, FaceTime or AirDrop. What you switch off disappears from the Home Screen without being deleted.
   • App Store, Media, Web, & Games: set age ratings for apps, films and music. Under Web Content: choose Limit Adult Websites, or Only Approved Websites for the youngest, where you list the sites yourself.
   • Allow Changes To: set Passcode & Face ID, Accounts and Mobile Data to Don't Allow, so none of it can change without you. If you want Intelligence and Siri out of the picture for the youngest, this is where they're switched off too.

   This is where the back doors close: delete-and-reinstall, the web, account changes and settings changes.

   Done, next step
8. 8
   Two bonuses

   Screen Distance, under Screen Time, reminds your child when the phone is held too close to the face. Costs nothing to turn on.

   And a favourite that belongs to accessibility rather than Screen Time: a black-and-white screen. Under Settings, Accessibility, Display & Text Size, Colour Filters, choose Greyscale. A screen without colour pulls less, and everything works exactly as before.

   Greyscale lives under Accessibility, not Screen Time. A calmer screen in a minute.

   Done

Questions, or something didn't match?

Reach us through the contact form or on Instagram, @stillna.app. Tell us how it went, it helps us make the guides better. On Instagram you can also follow our journey: helping families find their digital lagom.