Our devices are powerful tools. They provide us with endless resource options and allow us to create just about anything from anywhere. With power also comes the ability for young users to access information and content we might not want them to. Thankfully both Mac OS X and iOS on iPad and iPhones have fairly robust parental controls. I recently set up restrictions on both my Mac mini and my kids’ iPad to ensure I didn’t have to worry about what they were seeing or doing when using these devices.
Admittedly the OS X operating system has significantly more options for restrictions and settings when it comes to parental controls. As many of us know, Mac OS X allows you to set up multiple users with different access levels, and managed parental control is one of them. Setting up a new user on your Mac is very easy. From your admin account simply go to system preferences > users & groups and select the + sign. From here you can easily set up a new account that specifically is set up as Managed with Parental Controls, and create a new user ID and password for the new account. This account will have a password associated with it, so make sure it’s not the same as the admin password.
From here you can quickly and easily set multiple levels of controls such as restricting adult content on websites, what applications the user can access, and even setting time limits. For my purposes I set up my kids’ account to only be able to access specific websites. Apple makes this easy by starting you out with a default list of a dozen or so approved sites. You can add to this list or remove them all together and add your own sites. To ensure my settings were correct I tried to visit a website that was not in the list and I was quickly denied access. One great feature to this is that it does give you the ability to approve a website to the list without switching user accounts. All that you need to do is enter the admin username and password to quickly update the list. To further set up restrictions you can access parental controls from system preferences and adjust restrictions as needed. You can limit the time of day the user can access the machine with time limit, which applications on the computer they can or cannot access and even manage controls from another computer.
With iOS you can also set up a number of restrictions as well. In my opinion the settings on the iPad are not as convenient as those within OS X. The biggest limitation is that you cannot set up for an individual user, so any restrictions apply to the iPad or iPhone itself. Nonetheless they are very effective and simple to set up. Simply go to settings > general > restrictions. From here you will be asked to set up a PIN code to access and update the restrictions and can customize many options from disabling Safari or the App store to restricting explicit lyrics. In my testing I did find some more refined restrictions such as age limits on Apps were not as effective as I had hoped. I did hope to restrict my kids from my FaceBook App by using age restrictions but regretfully it was still accessible. However you can easily restrict specific websites or even location services like you can within OS X.
While I admit I do prefer the options within OS X, it’s good to know that no matter what Apple device your kids are using there are several options available to parents to control the content and usage of those devices. While in my house my kids might not be thrilled with the new settings, as a parent, I am much more comfortable when I hand over a device to them!