The other day, we posted a story about two groups that want Apple to create ways for parents to restrict children’s access to their mobile phones.
Apple provided a statement to Rene Ritchie that said in part:
“Apple has always looked out for kids, and we work hard to create powerful products that inspire, entertain, and educate children while also helping parents protect them online. We lead the industry by offering intuitive parental controls built right into the operating system.”
The company also said that they are working on new parental control features that will be released in the future. That is obviously a great step by Apple to provide these types of features.
However, as I thought about this story I couldn’t help but think that the specific problem these groups want addressed is not Apple’s to solve—it’s the parents. If parents don’t want their kids on a device, then don’t let them use the device.
The problem here seems less about Apple creating ways to restrict access to the iPhone and more about parents not parenting.
It shouldn’t be a binary choice, Dave. More comprehensive controls would enable better parenting.
Well, yes, but look at the replies to your earlier post. Parents seem to not be able to take away devices in the evening or whenever.
Except for calling Jim Dave this is perfect. 🙂
Taking a device is full of fucking drama. Having the device turn off isn’t. 🙂
I agree with you, Jim. It’s primarily a parenting problem. It’s a parents responsibility to set guidelines and boundaries for their children and hold them accountable when they fail to follow them. I’m not opposed to Apple offering software tools to help parents do this but I do think the bigger challenge is getting parents to do the hard job of actually taking away/moderating the device that is being used while abusing privileges. I say this from experience. These marvelous devices are a blessing and a curse. Teach your kids to respect you and others and they’ll respect themselves enough know why you are setting limits for them. The really hard part of this is that this creates conflict and many parents will acquiesce to avoid it. That’s not something Apple can fix with software.
“MOM!!! My phone won’t work!!!!”
Yeah, no drama there. Of course, telling kids that they need to leave phones on the counter when they go to bed would require, well, being a parent.
As a parent (13 and 8) and a veteran high school teacher AND someone who knows technology very well (5 years working Apple Retail as a second job), I have to say it’s too easy to simply blame the parents for bad parenting. Certainly that exists — I see it every day. There are far too many parents unwilling to have tough conversations with their kids about all manner of topics. But one pice of the problem here is that most parents aren’t technologically adept enough to understand their kids’ device usage. They simply don’t know what their kids are doing much less how to monitor or control it. Having more powerful, easy to understand tools to do this would be a huge benefit for many parents/families. And Apple is just the company that knows how to do it.
Reasonable people could disagree whether this is Apple’s responsibility. But Apple has a tremendous opportunity here to empower its users, young and old, to learn how to use technology responsibly. And, crassly, if Apple has better parental controls on its devices then parents are going to be more likely to buy Apple devices for their kids. It’s a win/win.
Ach, my mistake.
To all those that shout “this is about parenting!”… you’re right, but consider this:
You’re giving a device to a kid that has more functionality than an entire Radio Shack catalog from 1990… this isn’t about taking away the device. I WANT my kids to be able to read and to look things up on the internet on their iPad… I do NOT want them to spend their study time watching YouTube videos, playing Music.ly, play games, FaceTime friends, or any of the other thousand distractions that iPads/iPhones represent.
The Amazon Fire model for this is ideal, though their implementation has flaws. Disney Circle is great for setting limits on the internet, but having centralized control and monitoring on a device basis (and God willing at some point on a per-user basis for iOS) is well overdue.
“If parents don’t want their kids on a device, then don’t let them use the device.”
You do realize that it is not a binary choice. It’s not on/off. Sometimes you want them on a device, but don’t want them to go everywhere on the internet. Or you want to enable them to listen to music or read an ebook, but you don’t want them on adult sites or want to limit their time on social networks because you still want them to do their homework.
Spoken like someone who isn’t a parent.
Thanks for your judgement on how I interact with my kid. I truly appreciate it.
/shrug. If you want to take general comments personally, I can’t stop you. But in these threads I hear far too many parents who bemoan the problem that their kid won’t get off the phone but won’t do anything about it.
When my sons don’t listen or follow directions, when they show disrespect to parents, teachers or family, the last thing I worry about is their device usage. Those behaviors rescind their device privileges. Problem solved. Then they can earn them back through proper behavior.
To be clear, I reiterate my previous statement: Having the device turn off has much less (usually no) drama. And then I’ll back out, because your arguing my life for the sake of arguing isn’t working for me.
The Parental Controls in iOS are TERRIBLE!!! There is nothing industry leading or intuitive about the controls. They are buried in Settings>General>Restrictions. The choices are either on or off. Yeah, industry leading.
To everyone that says “just be a parent”, screw you! I guess the desire for better parental controls makes anyone asking an inept loser who is just a bad parent. That is like saying every developer who wants a better Mac Pro is just bad coder. Or every woman who hits the glass ceiling is just a unqualified employee.
People are asking for features are asking for features, not asking for your goddamn judgement! Go raise your kids how you want to and go fuck yourself for telling me how to raise mine!
For me and my two daughters (12 & 10), the issue isn’t so much the usage, but controlling what they can use. For example, if I want to punish them for misbehaving, then taking the device away is obviously a good punishment. But they are also home alone for 2.5 hours a day between their school release and my arrival at home. So taking away their phone gives me anxiety. What I would love is to have some more controls where I can simply lock out all but the phone app, or phone and messages, or FaceTime but only to a specific contact group. That way I can “restrict” them from the device, but they can still use the safety features that I got it for in the first place.
For me, the issue is we don’t have enough granular control yet. If I take the device every night from them, then they aren’t learning self control, but if I let them have the device, they will likely use it far too late. It would be nice to be able to lock out certain apps after a certain time.
Or in my other comment, I would love to be able to put them on “restriction” by setting it into a “phone only” mode that allows for phone/messages/FaceTime only to work, and only to a specific group that I selected. That way they still can reach me in an emergency, but they aren’t getting the “playtime” out of the device.
I generally don’t like to be someone that piles on, when my views have already been represented in others’ comments. But I’m going to make an exception in this case. This is not about parents not parenting. This is about parents appreciating having tools to help them parent.
I think it’s more about Apple giving us, the users, good tools to help us accomplish our goals, not about how we are parenting. Saying that it’s a parenting issue is like blaming the user for not understanding the user interface. That’s not the user’s problem. That’s bad design.
It’s already been stated that this shouldn’t be a binary choice, and it shouldn’t. The ability to add more granular features for parental control should be achievable by Apple. The new Nintendo Switch can be controlled with an app. With that app, I can set a time limit, alter the time limit according to the day of the week, and set it so that it either sends an onscreen message to my kid or to shut down the game when the time limit is up. On macOS, there is a reasonably powerful set of parental controls for kids’ accounts on the computer.
“They” (replace with your favorite villain) have shoved parental responsibility off on to the schools over the decades (but get pissed when the schools try to punish their kids??), so I guess “they” have discovered a new nanny to go after so “they” don’t have to be the bad guys. Sad. Can’t wait for AI to take us all out. 😉
I may quote your shrug at some point when you take umbrage at someone else’s comment about your choices.
This is a nuanced issue, and I see a lot of temptation to over-simplify it. I’m a parent of three kids who have some access to iPads. We’ve been frustrated by physically controlling the access when there were times where we’d like them to be able to do some things and not others, or – especially for my oldest – choose himself when he gets to use the device, up to a limit. We’ve also been frustrated by the lack of nuance in the ‘restrictions’ model. The call for Apple to move parental controls forward resonates with me a lot.
In passing, I’d add that I have a hard time understanding the motives of those who tend to simplify this to, essentially, parents need to parent better. I don’t think you actually hear those of us who express frustration with current controls and a desire for better ones.
“Hey kids, when you want to belittle someone, just speak in generalities, then you can just shrug it off and not have to take responsibility when they call you out on it!”
you sound like a freak.
Feel free. I wasn’t speaking specifically to Steven and only someone whose command of English is questionable would think I was. But hey if you get your jollies saving stuff up so you can throw it back at people, go for it.
“Hey kids, I use a throwaway commenting account so I don’t have to stand behind my words!”
Seems odd that you claim you weren’t speaking to Steven when your comment was a reply to Steven and addresses things in his post.
That’s about as believable as this hat looking good on Judge Smails.
Jim D, are you a parent?
My guess, no.
This is one of the few hard dividing factors in life in which neither side can properly understand the other.
(Or at least one side can’t, although I’m really not certain I still understand what it’s like to not be a parent.)
Despite my commentary, I’m asking seriously.
Rick. You’re being an ass. You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.
Wow. And people here call me needlessly abusive.
I look forward to google’s investors requesting the same.
If you think that’s abusive, you’re incredibly sheltered. You threatened to save up something I said and use it against me. I merely told you to go ahead and do it because I don’t care. And you feel abused? Please… Don’t make threats then flounce.
Sigh…. read his comment again. It does NOT SAY “If I tried this with my kids” or the like. He says: “Taking a device is full of fucking drama.”
That 1) doesn’t imply anything about it being his kids, 2) is a statement that could even be made by someone who doesn’t have kids. If he’d said “If I took my kids’ devices away” I’d not have replied as I did because then he, and you would be right.
Here, I’ll make this easier for you all. The statement as written is general. A statement such as “If I took their iPhone from my kids….” is specific.
English 101. It’s a useful course. Try it.
The bombast keeps getting better. If you felt the idea of throwing your own words back at you was a threat, you’re a paranoiac.