4 tips to make your iPhone and iPad child-friendly

If you have an old iPhone or iPad lying around somewhere, you can easily turn it into a fun toy for kids. With these four tips you can make an iPhone and iPad child-friendly and safe.

1. Prevent children from sharing their location

If you give an iPhone to a child, it can be a comforting idea that his or her location is not constantly being recorded. To do this, you can lock location services. It works like this:

1. Open the Settings app on the iPhone;
2. Go to iCloud and scroll all the way down;
3. Tap Share My Location and turn off the green switch by tapping it.

To ensure that your children do not (accidentally) switch this function back on, you can put a lock on it. Ideal if you want to make an iPhone and iPad child-friendly. You can do this via the steps below.

1. Open the Settings app and go to ‘General’;
2. Select ‘Restrictions’ and enter your password;
3. Scroll down and choose ‘Share my location’ under the heading ‘Privacy’;
4. In the next screen, choose ‘Do not allow changes’.

2. Turn off in-app purchases

To prevent a child from spending money on in-app purchases, it’s smart to turn this feature off completely. If someone tries to spend money in an app, a message will automatically appear stating that this is not possible. This is how you disable in-app purchases:

1. Open Settings and go to General;
2. Choose ‘Restrictions’ and enter your password;
3. Scroll to the switch with ‘Buy from apps’;
4. Toggle this green switch to gray to disable in-app purchases.

3. Turn on restrictions

By turning on restrictions, you can be sure that no adult content will appear on the screen of the iPhone or iPad. You can do this for music, movies, books, apps, Siri and even websites. Handy if a child also uses a browser like Safari, but you don’t want him to be able to access just any website.

1. Open Settings and go to General and choose Restrictions;
2. Scroll down until you reach the ‘Allowed material’ category;
3. Here you can set restrictions for films, books and apps, among other things. Tap a category to access its settings.

4. Allow only one app

To make sure that your iPhone or iPad is child-friendly, you can also choose to allow only one app. This cannot close the child, so that he or she can, for example, engage in a game or educational app. Therefore, add a time limit to prevent a child from being glued to the screen for hours.

1. Open Settings and go to ‘General’;
2. Select ‘Accessibility’ and scroll down to activate ‘Guided Access’;
3. After you enable Guided Access, you can enter a password and time limit.

Now that you’ve set up Guided Access, press the home button three times in quick succession to turn it on. You disable this restriction by pressing the home button again three times and entering your password.

In April, iPhoned will give extensive attention to the theme Family. Throughout the month, our articles focus on all things Apple and family. So keep an eye on iPhoned and sign up for our newsletter or download the iPhoned app to stay informed.