How do I set up parental controls on my child’s iPhone or iPad?

Apple’s parental controls are genuinely capable, and almost nobody uses more than a fraction of them — mostly because they’re spread across two features with confusing names.

Here’s the plain version.

The two pieces

Family Sharing links your Apple accounts together. It’s how a child’s device gets connected to yours, and it’s what lets you approve purchases and downloads.

Screen Time is the actual controls — limits, content restrictions, downtime.

You need Family Sharing set up first, otherwise you’re configuring Screen Time on the child’s device itself, where an enterprising child can simply turn it off.

Setting it up

1. On your own device, open Settings, tap your name, then Family. Add your child — either creating an Apple Account for them, or adding an existing one.
2. Under 13s must have an account created through Family Sharing; Apple won’t let a child that age hold an independent one.
3. Turn on Ask to Buy. Every download, free or paid, needs your approval. This is the single most effective setting and it’s off by default.
4. Open Screen Time and select your child’s name. You can now configure everything remotely from your own phone.

The settings worth your time

Content & Privacy Restrictions. The important one. Web content filtering, age ratings for apps, films and music, and control over whether they can change their own account settings.

Downtime. Hours when only the apps you allow will work. Most usefully overnight — and note that the device stays usable for calls, so it isn’t a blunt shutdown.

App Limits. Daily allowances by category — an hour of social media, say. More practical than banning things outright.

Communication Limits. Who they can contact, and separately during downtime.

Screen Time passcode. Set one, and make it different from the device unlock code. Parents skip this constantly, and it is the whole thing — without it, the controls are a suggestion.

What it can’t do

Worth being realistic, because relying on it too heavily is its own risk.

Web filtering catches a lot but not everything. A determined teenager will find workarounds — and looking up how to defeat Screen Time is an afternoon’s work. Controls don’t travel to a friend’s device or a school laptop. And none of it addresses what happens inside apps you’ve allowed, which is where most of what parents actually worry about happens.

It is a useful set of guardrails. It is not a substitute for knowing what your child is doing online, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

A couple of practical notes

Set it up with your child rather than secretly where you can. Controls discovered later tend to become a contest.

Review it as they get older. Settings that suited a nine-year-old will be resented at fourteen, and resentment is what drives children to find workarounds.

And check the Screen Time passcode isn’t one they’ve watched you type.

If you’d rather someone did it

Bring both devices — yours and theirs — and we’ll set it up properly in one go, including the parts that are easy to miss. We’ll also show you how to change things afterwards, so you’re not stuck with whatever we chose.

Android and Windows have equivalents and we can set those up too.

Workshop on Station Road, or ring 01753 884700.