How to Use Family Sharing to Monitor Your Child’s iPhone

Create a Family Sharing Group

Before you set up any parental controls, it’s best to create a Family Sharing group with you and your children in it. Family Sharing allows you to share your iTunes and App Store purchases, iCloud storage, and Apple TV channel or Music subscriptions.

But you can also use the Family Sharing settings to approve or deny your children’s purchases, monitor their screen time, block adult content, or track their current location. What’s particularly great about Family Sharing is that you can do all of of these remotely from your own iOS device

To create a Family Sharing group you would simply:

1. Open up the the Settings application on your device and click on [your name] which is at the top of the screen. Select the option to Set Up Family Sharing if you have not already done that.
2. Follow the onscreen prompts to add a payment method, next, invite family members, and enable the Family Sharing features.
3. After creating the group, tap on the Add Family Member to invite more people to your Family Sharing group, up to a total of six people.
4. Optionally, ask the Family Organizer of an existing Family Sharing group to include you to their sharing group.

Creating a Child Account

Existing Family members can only join your Family Sharing group if they have an Apple ID. If your child is below 13 years, you would be required need to create a Child account for them to use, since Apple does not allow them make their own.

A Child account must be linked to a Family Sharing group until the child reaches the age of 13, at which point they can decide to leave the group.

To create a Child account for Family Sharing simply:

1. Open up the the Settings application on your iPhone or iPad and go to [Your Name], next, click on the Family Sharing tab.
2. Tap the Add Family Member button and choose to Create a Child Account. Then follow the onscreen prompts to create an Apple ID for your children.
3. After creating the account, use the email address and password that you have just created to sign in to that account on your chils iPhone or iPad.

Assigning Parents or Guardians

If there are several adults (that are 18 years old) in your Family Sharing group, you may want to designate some of them to act as Parents/Guardians for any children that are in the group.

A Parent/Guardian can view/ monitor Screen Time, modify the Content & Privacy Restriction settings, and approve or deny App Store and iTunes purchases for your child’s device.

To make someone a Parent/Guardian in your Family Sharing group simply:

• Open up the Settings application on your iPhone or iPad and go over to [Your Name] > Family Sharing.
• Click an the adult family member’s name and turn on the Parent/Guardian option.

Approve Downloads With Ask to Buy

Ask to Buy sends out a notification to all your Apple devices whenever your child tries to download any content from iTunes or from the App Store. You can then tap Get or Decline in the recieved notification to decide whether to let them download the media or not.

Ask to Buy works for both free downloads as well as for paid purchases. So your child would always need your permission before downloading a new application.

Apple turns on Ask to Buy automatically when you create a Child account. But you can also switch it on or off for anyone that is under 18 in your Family Sharing settings, to do that:

1. Open up the Settings application and go over to [Your Name] > Family Sharing.
2. Click on a family member’s name and turn on the Ask to Buy option.
3. When you get a request notification, tap the message to view the application or media your child wants to download.

Monitor Your Child’s Screen Time

Screen Time gathers a range of data to show how much someone has used their Apple device, together with which application they spend their time on. With Family Sharing, you can monitor your children’s Screen Time remotely and impose limits to keep them from spending too much time on their iPhone or iPad.

To enable Screen Time for your child’s device, simply:

1. Open up the Settings application on your iPhone or iPad and go to [Your Name] > Family Sharing.
2. Tap on Screen Time, then click on your child’s name and choose to Turn On Screen Time.

When you turn on Screen Time for your child, it would alert you to set App Limits, Downtime, and a Screen Time passcode immediately. You can edit these settings at any time by using the Screen Time passcode you create; keep this passcode secret from your child so they cannot edit the settings on their own.

To view your child’s Screen Time usage or edit their settings, open up the Settings applcation and go to Screen Time. Then tap on your child’s name below the Family heading.

You should see a usage report at the top of the screen. Click on See All Activity for a breakdown of how long your child spent on each application or each category of apps. If you turn on Include Website Data, you can also view how long they spent on particular website in Safari.

Enable Content & Privacy Restrictions

The best parental controls on an iPhone or iPad are in the Content & Privacy Restrictions,situated within the Screen Time settings. Thanks to Family Sharing, you can also edit the restrictions on your child’s device remotely.

1. Go over to Settings > Screen Time on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Below the Family section, tap on your child’s name to view their Screen Time settings.
3. Then go over to Content & Privacy Restrictions and turn them on by using the toggle at the top of the screen.