PSA: You Need To Change This 1 Setting On Your Phone If Kids Also Use It

In 2021, Brianna Loos, a mother from Rochester, New York, gave her phone to her 3-year-old daughter while she hopped into the bathroom for a quick shower. 

What happened next became the subject of a viral TikTok that Loos posted about. Her daughter was supposed to be playing a preschool learning game she was familiar with on the phone, but with the right taps, the toddler started streaming live on Loos’ Instagram.

Loos had just been shampooing her hair when her daughter knocked on the bathroom door, asking for help with the phone. When Loos went to grab it to see what was wrong, she realised it was streaming live while she was in the shower. 

“I got a lot of hate for letting my toddler use my cell phone,” Loos told HuffPost. “I’d love to say I became a perfect parent and never put them in front of a screen again, but I’d be lying.“

What did change was that Loos got her daughter, who is now 6, a tablet after that incident, so her child could only access programs that were made specifically for her. Loos also started using the “guided access” setting on her iPhone, which restricts how a phone can be used, based on the recommendations of “other mothers who are just trying to survive like myself,” she said. 

“Just yesterday I was in a doctor’s appointment, and while talking to the doctors, I was able to give my child my phone to watch videos, and the guided access prevented her from being able to click out of the app she was in,” Loos said. “It’s been a game changer.”

Maril Vernon, a security architect and certified ethical hacker, said that guided access works well for toddlers in “short periods of time, single app usage type things.”

“This way, you set the iPad on the ground, let them punch their fishies [in a game], walk away and make dinner, and you know that they’re not going to escape that and accidentally open an internet browser,” Vernon said. 

To use guided access on your iPhone, go to “settings,” select “accessibility” and turn on guided access. From there, you can set a passcode for this option. Then you can triple-click the side button of your iPhone in an app to turn on guided access and choose which features you want to control within the app.

For Android phones, use the app and screen pinning feature to keep the user within one app or screen. To use it, go to settings, select “security,” then “advanced” and choose “app pinning.” From there, you can choose to pin screens by swiping up to the middle of your screen, selecting the app’s icon and tapping the “pin” option, according to Android’s help centre. 

What cybersecurity experts do with their own kids’ tech devices 

If you want to go one step further than guided access, consider the advice of cybersecurity experts on what they do with technology their own children use. 

Vernon said she uses an iPhone’s “parental controls” with her children, who are 6 and 8, because it “offers more control over the entire device.” 

To do it, she created Gmail accounts for her daughters that are linked with her account and designate that the users are children. Vernon’s parental controls list her daughters’ accounts so she can govern usage on their devices.

“The screen will involuntarily shut off, because I’ve said that it will, and nothing they can do will wake it up. Certain apps are allowed at all times, and then certain apps are not allowed at all times,” Vernon said. “I can literally go into the iTunes and app store purchases and allowed apps and features and determine which specific apps each of them are allowed to download.” 

To block a child using a restricted app on another device, Vernon recommended turning on the “share across devices” option in parental controls so that your settings are consistent across any device signed into iCloud. Android devices also have parental controls through Google’s Family Link app, which can restrict what content can be downloaded or purchased from Google Play and can set screen time limits.

For Vernon, it’s unrealistic to expect parents to never hand a young child their phone.

“Rather than make technology a no-go, we have tech-free nights just for family bonding, but they’re allowed to unwind with a device as well if they want, as long as they’re doing it responsibly and within my guidelines,” she said. 

Part of teaching kids about phones is understanding their attention-grabbing power. George Kamide, co-host of the cybersecurity podcast “Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks,” said that before you hand your child your phone, you should also understand that it is not just a communications device ― it is a “cloud-based supercomputer in our pocket” and a “surveillance device.”

Kamide suggested introducing children first to technology with limited capabilities, like a Gizmo Watch, which can give parents a way to check in with children while limiting calls to a few minutes. Both Kamide and Vernon said they have used these kinds of watches with their children.

This way, parents can see if the child becomes “super distracted” by the watch, Kamide said.

“All of those devices have a school mode that allows you to shut down the functionality remotely during school hours,” he said. “But if your child is also showing that they can be mature enough to handle that during school without using it a lot, then you know you can begin to build up those new capacities.” 

Additionally, it’s important to reflect on when and how tablets are being used. Parents who have successfully limited their children’s screen use say they reserve it for very specific situations like learning educational songs or playing games as a reward for doing homework. You should also examine your own screen time behaviours to make sure you’re displaying phone habits you want your kids to eventually emulate.

To practice what he advises on limiting phone use, Kamide tries to follow productivity expert Cal Newport’s advice on leaving your phone in one spot so it’s not in your pocket at all times.

“That will reduce your kids basically seeing you pull out the phone all the time,” Kamide said. “It’s kind of a win-win if I can pull it off, because I feel less drag on my attention and my children also see better behaviour.”