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Apple Planning New, 'Robust' Parental Controls To Help Protect Children, Teens (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An open letter to Apple from some investors sparked the tech giant to respond by promising new software tools for parents to restrict and monitor their kids' smartphone use. In a report by The Wall Street Journal, Apple states it has plans to create new software features that will make its current parental controls on iPhone and other devices "even more robust." "We think deeply about how our products are used and the impact they have on users and the people around them," Apple said in its statement to The Wall Street Journal. "We take this responsibility very seriously and we are committed to meeting and exceeding our customers' expectations, especially when it comes to protecting kids."
Apple didn't provide details on its planned, improved parental control features, but it did point back to the controls its software has had in place since 2008. The Settings app on every iPhone has a parental control section that allows adults to restrict website access, control in-app purchases, and install or delete apps, among other things. But those existing settings haven't been enough to quell the worries of the investors who wrote an open letter to Apple last week, expressing concern about the effect smartphones can have on kids who are glued to those devices.
Apple didn't provide details on its planned, improved parental control features, but it did point back to the controls its software has had in place since 2008. The Settings app on every iPhone has a parental control section that allows adults to restrict website access, control in-app purchases, and install or delete apps, among other things. But those existing settings haven't been enough to quell the worries of the investors who wrote an open letter to Apple last week, expressing concern about the effect smartphones can have on kids who are glued to those devices.
I knew it!
Looking at this the wrong way. Those children are proto-cyborgs and those smartphones are prosthesis.
I'm not a parent, and when I was growing up things such as iphones didn't exist, so I have to ask..
Why seek a technical solution to the problem? Why not simply take the device away from the child after x time elapses?
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
My daughter's 5S just doesn't have a credit card attached and the result is a pretty awesome lockdown. I don't see what they could improve.
We take this responsibility very seriously and we are committed to meeting and exceeding our customers' expectations, especially when it comes to protecting kids.
That's why we make sure our products are produced only with genuine conflict minerals. They are hand-purified by the most supple child laborers using a mercury solution. Our planned obsolescence program ensures that we are able to provide the maximum amount of conflict minerals to our customers, as well as the landfills in their neighborhoods.
We need something to prevent kids from staying on their phones all the time. What could that be? /sarc
Good lord, has it come to this that parents and teachers are looking to Apple to raise and educate their goddamn kids?
Given the disparity of tech-savvy between generations, it seems more likely that this technology will result in the kids locking out the parents, rather than the reverse.
I trip or otherwise bang into stupid fucks that think they can be in public and not pay attention to their surroundings because they zomg MUST see every bullying text or post by fellow fucktards at their schools on social media or otherwise. then I tell them if they'd been watching where they were goong, this wouldn't have happened. Its not my responsibility to pay EXTRA attention for THEM.
I have nothing against parental controls, except from that standpoint that they are largely ineffectual since MOST kids will know more about technology than the parents (not true obv of most Slashdot parents).
However I think a generic "device not usable for X hours a day" is a super bad idea. Why would you give a kid a fantastic way to communicate easily and then disable it ever? if I had kids I would try to make sure they had smartphones asap, both so I could track them (yes I would absolutely track the hell out of kids), but also os if they got into real trouble they could contact me any time for help. If the device is in a disabled phase, you could really be screwing them over in an emergency.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know the 90s were different but we had one pc in a central area of the house. When I wanted stuff in my room beyond a radio and a CD player the answer was never. No tv, video game, pc, etc in places the parents canâ(TM)t see.
I see my friends letting their grade schoolers run around with tablets and smart phones and cringe. I donâ(TM)t have kids but I donâ(TM)t get why parents canâ(TM)t say no? Itâ(TM)s a powerful word that works.
It would be nice if, with the improved controls, they would allow to publish nude content instead of forcing US prudery on the rest of the world.
I am in my late 30's with 3 kids between 9 and 14. I honestly can't tell if I'm doing the right thing anymore on this front, but I have outright refused to let my kids have smartphones. I'm not looking to this crowd for affirmation or vindication, but I hope to share my experience for those who find themselves in similar circumstance. Maybe you can give me some perspective.
I know the nonsense I got up to when I was a teen...and I was a "good" kid who barely had a healthy dose of trouble. The mistakes that accompanied learning were unavoidable...but the repercussions were likely temporary and surviveable. And you had to kinda seek out the truly permanent or mortally dangerous risks.
I'm not a prude. I stopped forcing my kids to wear helmets once they had ridden their bikes for a year. The only hovering I do around my kids is making sure the boys don't bloody each other.
The one thing I am adamant about is them not having the internet in their pockets. The thought of them plowing through 4chan or sending/receiving nude texts...or unwittimgly talking to paedophiles...nightmares.
Kids are supposed to disobey and get into trouble. But for Pete'ssake make them work for it! Don't hand them all the gory details on an iPlatter in never-ending full motion HD! There's no effort to type in a search term or click a link compared to procuring and hiding a skin mag. Even in the early internet days on a desktop, you still had a fair risk of getting caught since you were in the living room in plain view!
The whole sexting thing is pretty much a given...if the first MMS ever wasn't someone's ass, then the 2nd or 3rd probably was. It was inevitable from there. And then to blindly whitelist all senders by default...terribly risky to give to a child.
And don't get me started on addiction. I don't do Facebook, and my wife gave it up 8 years ago. She doesn't want a smartphone after breaking 3 of them in a year back in 2014. I have 1, but pretty much use it for email and news feeds only.
I love my kids, and they tell me I'm the best Dad ever. They still ask every few months about iPhones, even though I've largely explained my reasoning to them. They're pretty much the only ones in their public schools without the latest iPhone. I bought all 3 of them simple durable flip phones and disabled all MMS.
For context, I've been a programmer since '97 and started tooling around on BBS's in the early 90s. It gets harder and harder every time they ask to say "no", but I think they are truly better individuals without smartphones...at least not this young. And honestly, even if the parental controls are improved to a point where I could limit everything I wanted to limit, I'd spend so much time administering the controls, I'd burn out and get lazy.
...when everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal.
Every "take the device away after X time" will be a new battle of wills and of wits and a new opportunity for the child to take umbrage if the parent succeeds.
If the boundaries are clearly set before the device is given, and if as many of those boundaries as possible can be enforced consistently without the parent's repeated intervention, it reduces household friction and allows family interactions to focus on more positive things.
Plus, helicopter parenting is harmful, and there ought to be plenty of times when the parents aren't hovering over the child ready to take away the device after precisely X time elapses.
For most things - including almost everything invented before the Internet except, perhaps, deadly weapons - you should be able to trust that unsupervised kids, if they've been taught well, will uphold reasonable boundaries most of the time in their parents' absence, and that when they violate those boundaries they will usually learn valuable but not-too-damaging lessons about why the boundaries were there in the first place.
But the variety of damaging things and deranged people kids can encounter over the Internet is too broad and deep to leave it at that. Also, the ways that social media and app designers have focused on "slot machine psychology" etc to retain eyeballs for ads &c by fostering addiction are too much to expect kids to avoid on their own. Even just the "source of endless novelty without creativity or effort" aspect is dangerous for kids to have continual access to. So there are good reasons to have boundaries set when the parent isn't there to enforce them.
So glade Apple is finally going to be the parents kids don't have. But don't you think kids are smart enough to get around these controls. I'll bet they can.
MacOS has had parentally managed user accounts for quite a while which can do all the application, website, and time-based lockdowns.
These are the sorts of things that parents want control over (until little Johnny gets savvy and decides to explore the mac recovery partition because nobody's put in a firmware password)
The thing is, most parents don't know about these features - much less make use of them.
It's easy to implement - when you know about them. The issue is that nobody knows, and don't have time/inclination to learn
The iPhone has none of the parental controls - and if they ARE there and I'm actually mistaken - I can't easily find them.
Honestly - it makes a lot of sense that Apple should put these features into the iPhone for worried parents. They want their kids to be contactable with their phones, but not using them every hour of the day.
For example, Apple could make it so the parent's iCloud account can lock the phone down before giving it to their kid. Apple could put a time lock on the smartphone features, and only enable phone calls from people known in the contacts list - or only accept calls from parents when it's out of hours. That's in addition to the website and application locking you see on MacOS.
Data usage limits and application purchases can be managed easily enough.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Iâ(TM)ve been using appleâ(TM)s enterprise mobile device management software to set limits on my kids phones. JAMF is great for a slashdotter (and free for two devices if you read daring fireball) but the average iPhone parent could use something with a bit more âoeit just worksâ in it. This is a good idea if apple implements it well, though it will kill any 3rd parties that already sell such services.
Oh come on. Apple: Didn't you have parents? Oh no, you didn't. Let me tell you - as a former child....
Children do not need phones, let alone smartphones.
I commonly see this weak excuse from parents claiming they, "want to know where their children are."
Seriously? You're that bad of a parent that you haven't the foggiest idea where your kids are? Here was what my childhood was like back in the 2000s.
Wake up - take bus to school - school - sports practice - ride home with family friends - home.
Here's what a non busy day looked like: wake up - bus- school - bus- home.
Wow! It's like somehow I was in the immediate vacinity of a responsible adult at all times and my parents knew my safety was ok. Mind blowing isn't it?
And to think, flip phones were a thing too during this time. I didn't get my first phone until I got my first driver's license which at that time makes intelligent sense.
Phones cost excessive amounts of money too on top of a monthly contract. Why should I pay extra cash each month to have my kid dick around on social media at my expense?
Parents these days are weak. Tell little Timmy and Tia no you're not getting a phone. It's that easy! If you really want to know where they are, (and using this as a lame excuse when in reality you spoil your kids with expensive electronics) buy them a crappy flip phone. Yes, they still make news ones.
When my kid is old enough to ask for a smartphone before the age of 16, my answer will be, "Ok, how are you paying for the cell service?"
My kid is about to switch from android phone to iphone, but what blocks me from giving it a go is inadequate software.
What I need is essentially a functionality of "androidlost".
- command and control by push notification AND/OR by sms from set up phone numbers
- ability to remotely turn the sound on and activate arbitrarily long alarm (also by sms), ie. in some places 1 second alarm is a max, in other cases I may need 5s or 20s to find the phone.
- send camera picture to parent's email on unlock error
- send gps location to parents's email on some low battery threshold
- ability to get gps location seems to be present in most solutions
Blocking apps or websites has little meaning to me (sites can be blocked with opendns); blocking apps can be achieved by not providing password to app store.
... I predict.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
They are afraid there parents turn on parental controls and lock them out.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
They are afraid there parents turn on parental controls and lock them out.
Yeah, i know, "their". It's a fucking typo, you toddler.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.