My children are breaking my screentime.
11/06/26 Filed in: screentime | parental controls
My kids are breaking screen time by FaceTime in their friends and screen sharing then they go in and they can adjust and deactivate the screen time.
___________
There are two ways this can be accomplished. 1 (as I mention in this newsletter) the child knows the 4 digit code which is by far the most common, 2. They know your appleID and password. Screentime, when set up correctly with “block at end of limit” activated, avoiding the categories settings, cannot be worked around by children.
The main problem with parents and screen time settings is that usually, the child knows the code, the parent forgets to turn on “block at end of limit”, the child knows the parent’s appleID and password, the child has access to the parent’s phone, the child or parent has accidentally added certain apps into “always allowed” therefore remain unaffected by downtime or controls, the child has logged out of their own appleID on their phone (which can be blocked in Content and Privacy settings within ScreenTime).
There is no magic bullet the children know to defeat Apple’s screentime settings. It’s almost always that they’ve discovered the 4 digit code. If your child continues to penetrate the defenses provided by screentime, another strategy is to simply lock the phone down where no apps can be added or removed. If the child is unwilling to live within the rules then the consequences can be increased. This approach is now being considered inside the new iOS27 update which should give the parent the ability to simply turn off the phone whenever they’d like other than phone calls.
___________
There are two ways this can be accomplished. 1 (as I mention in this newsletter) the child knows the 4 digit code which is by far the most common, 2. They know your appleID and password. Screentime, when set up correctly with “block at end of limit” activated, avoiding the categories settings, cannot be worked around by children.
The main problem with parents and screen time settings is that usually, the child knows the code, the parent forgets to turn on “block at end of limit”, the child knows the parent’s appleID and password, the child has access to the parent’s phone, the child or parent has accidentally added certain apps into “always allowed” therefore remain unaffected by downtime or controls, the child has logged out of their own appleID on their phone (which can be blocked in Content and Privacy settings within ScreenTime).
There is no magic bullet the children know to defeat Apple’s screentime settings. It’s almost always that they’ve discovered the 4 digit code. If your child continues to penetrate the defenses provided by screentime, another strategy is to simply lock the phone down where no apps can be added or removed. If the child is unwilling to live within the rules then the consequences can be increased. This approach is now being considered inside the new iOS27 update which should give the parent the ability to simply turn off the phone whenever they’d like other than phone calls.
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