Screen Time was created to let parents and guardians set policies for children that were automatically enforced by Apple’s operating systems. No matter what device a child used that was logged in to the same Apple Account, Screen Time restrictions would remain the same. In practice, not so much, and it remains to be seen how well this Apple-described redesign will improve that consistency.
Screen Time controls require that you set up a Child Account, which has to be part of Family Sharing. In the past, I know that parents have sometimes created regular accounts for their children or faked their birth dates to make them older out of frustration with Screen Time and other features that didn’t work as described.
A new tool for parents helps guide them in choosing apps they want their children to have access to.
Work with Ask to Browse
Apple already offered an Ask to Buy option, which let a kid send a request to the account’s owner in the Family Sharing group when they want to make an App Store purchase or download a free app. Ask to Browse builds on that, requiring that child request access to any website they haven’t previously been granted permission to use, or that a parent hadn’t already added to a list of acceptable sites.
The request is sent via Messages to the adult owner of the Family Sharing group and any other adult designated as Parent/Guardian. The parent or guardian can then tap or click Decline or Approve.
Set time per category
The previous Screen Time controls for setting how much time apps and other resources could be used were difficult to manage. The new ones, synced across all platforms, let a parent set Time Allowances, with separate settings for weekdays and weekends. Apple has a recommended maximum based on age that they developed in conjunction with child-development experts, they say.
Time Allowances define the total screen time permitted per day, and then are divided up into maximum amounts by category: Entertainment, Games, Social Media, and All Others. Parents can further create time windows within the days during which some categories aren’t available. Apple’s own example is to turn off the Entertainment, Games, and Social Media categories during school hours.
This overhauled approach also gives parents a sort of dashboard for each child. They can see current usage stats. That’s also where a child’s access can be paused—i.e., cut off entirely for the moment—or they can be granted unlimited use for the rest of the day, or until a parent revokes that.
Apple has also widened what gets blurred for children in this release, which is covered in how iOS 27 blurs gore and violence.
