How to protect children online with iPhone and iPad

On Safer Internet Day, Apple celebrates this date by sharing a few tips and tricks to protect children online with iPhone and iPad. As a company that praises privacy, sharing these tricks is important in a connected world, where children also interact online to learn, talk to friends, and play games.

“At Apple, our goal is to provide people with technology that not only improves and enriches their lives, but also helps them stay safe online,” said Erik Neuenschwander, Apple’s director of User Privacy. “We’re proud to be an official supporter of Safer Internet Day in Europe — and we’ll keep innovating every day to empower people to protect their families online.”

Besides some of the tips available below, Apple is also holding free educational sessions online and in Apple Stores to help parents, guardians, teachers, and child safety advocates get the most out of the family-friendly safety tools across Apple devices.

For example, iOS 16 offers improved child account set up as part of Family Sharing. The new Family Checklist shares helpful tips, including reminders to update a child’s settings as they age.

With Screen Time, families can get weekly reports on their children’s activity and set limits on the amount of time spent on-device or on certain apps. Downtime, for example, lets families block apps and notifications at certain hours of the day, and Communication Limits helps them choose who their children can communicate with. Through Content & Privacy Restrictions in Screen Time, parental controls can block or limit specific apps and features on a child’s device.

Parents can restrict downloads to age-appropriate apps on the App Store and use Ask to Buy to approve or decline purchases and downloads. And in the Made for Kids section, Apple says it enforces strict standards that require every app to protect children’s data and prevent age-inappropriate advertising.

Last but not least, parents can also turn on Communication Safety for the Messages app to provide warnings and resources on their child’s device if they receive or attempt to send photos containing nudity. Using on-device machine learning, Messages detects and blurs the image and offers age-appropriate guidance. In partnership with local experts, Apple is expanding the feature to more regions worldwide.