Screen time for kids is a pandora’s box that even Apple can’t fix.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge (News+ link):

Apple is trying to show the world it’s being responsible when it comes to your children.

Only it’s really not. Screen Time sucks. As a mother of two whose children have had Apple Watches, iPads, and iPhones, and who are now entering their late teens (18 and 15), I’ve spent years grappling with Apple’s parental controls. In that time, I’ve gone through what feels like approximately 2,000 Screen Time passcodes and gained several new gray hairs.

Screen Time is simply not a reliable way to control your child’s device use; the only real way to limit screen time is to remove the screen. That’s something Apple is unlikely to ever get behind, and something that, as your child gets older, becomes increasingly untenable for a whole host of reasons.

I’m not going to get into those here, or the argument about how much responsibility one should place on the developer of the technology versus the parents when it comes to parental control — that’s a whole societal debate we can have another time.

My issue with Screen Time is that the world’s most powerful technology company, with reams of expertise in hardware and software, has half-assed its “parental controls” for years and is now trying to put lipstick on a pig.

There are definitely improvements to parental controls, but to quote Jennifer again:

I’m tired of playing whack-a-mole with my kids' devices.

If tech enthusiasts are fed up and are having issues with parental controls, what about the average parent?

I haven’t dug deep into the new settings, but that’s because my kids don’t have any apps on their devices. The only 3rd party apps they have are Google Translate for learning languages, and a Quran app for reading scripture.

That’s it. No Safari, no games, and hell no to social media.

Quite literally, hell no.

They read a lot of books, which have real knowledge and entertainment that helps develop the brain instead of hindering it.