Apple's New Guide to Healthy Screen Habits for Children: The Settings Worth Using

A lot of the sessions I do at this time of year involve a grandparent, a new iPad and a seven-year-old, and the question is always the same: how do I set this up so it is safe without turning it into a fight? Apple has just published a guide that answers exactly that, written with the American Academy of Pediatrics, and it is the clearest thing Apple has put out on the subject. Here is what is in it and the settings I would actually switch on.

What the guide is

It is called Building Healthy Digital Habits: A Guide for Families, it is free, and you will find it at support.apple.com/guide/aap-apple. Rather than a list of switches, it is written as six steps, starting with a conversation and ending with a plan you revisit as the child gets older, with the Apple settings dropped in where they help. It is built around the parental controls in iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27, so every device in the family needs to be on the new software first, including the Apple Watch and, if you have one, the Vision Pro.

The six steps

• Start with a conversation about what the device is for, and agree the rules before the screen comes out.
• Create a Child Account rather than letting them use yours. This is the step people skip, and it is the one everything else depends on.
• Turn on Ask to Buy and Ask to Browse, so app downloads and websites need a parent to approve them on their own phone.
• Set Time Allowances and Schedules: a daily limit on games, say, and a bedtime after which the device locks.
• Manage who they can talk to. Communication Safety is now on by default for everyone under 18, blurring unsuitable images in Messages, and you can limit who can contact them.
• Revisit the plan as they grow, loosening what no longer needs locking and tightening what does.

The guide also gives age-by-age suggestions for how much screen time is reasonable, which is the bit parents tell me they find most useful, because it comes from doctors rather than from Apple.

The settings I would switch on first

If you only do three things, make them a Child Account, Ask to Buy, and a bedtime schedule. Those three stop the expensive mistakes, the unsuitable apps and the 11pm YouTube, which between them cover most of the trouble I get called about. Time limits on specific apps are worth adding once you know which ones are the problem, and there is no shame in that taking a few weeks to find out.

All of this is done from the parent's iPhone in Settings, under Family, and once it is set up it runs itself. If you would like it set up with you, especially if you are a grandparent being handed the job, that is a session we do often and it takes about an hour.

Alex