When there are kids in your home, ensuring their safety is of utmost importance. You want everything to be safe for the young ones, and that includes the toys and gadgets they play with. Now, your kids are old enough to borrow your iPhone and play Angry Birds or Cut the Rope, but you still want to take precaution when you let them use it. Or should they? Here are some tips to help keep your iPhone safe for your children:
Set Up A Passcode
It has been ages since everybody has advised you to set up a passcode. A simple passcode is only comprised of four digits, and it’s not that hard to type. In case someone wants to steal information from your phone, a passcode is your ‘first aid’ and your first level of security against hackers.
In case your child is not old enough to understand what the iPhone is for, he won’t be able to access important app or file once you turn your passcode on. If you want added security, you can set up a complex passcode, where you can put alphanumeric characters. To set up a passcode on your iPhone, just follow these simple steps:
- Tap the Settings app, then tap General.
- Tap Passcode Lock.
- You’ll be prompted to enter a passcode. Enter it twice to produce the passcode options screen.
Buy A Durable iPhone Case
Kids love throwing things away, and you have to ensure your phone’s case is sturdy enough to withstand accidental drops leading to possible breakage. As such, you should also equip your phone with a durable screen protector to prevent scratches and bumps on the screen. Griffin and Otterbox are some brands that offer durable cases for your iPhone.
Enable Restrictions
To prevent your children from playing with apps that for business or productivity like RingCentral or Dropbox, you can have the Restrictions function enabled in your device. You can make apps available or unavailable, hide age-restricted music, and prevent children from deleting apps on your device. This really comes in handy if you want to let your kids use your phone without having them access or modify any of the sensitive contents on your device.
To enable restrictions, do the following:
- Tap the Settings app, and then tap General.
- Tap Restrictions.
- Tap enable restrictions and enter your passcode. The passcode will be required to make changes to these settings or to disable restrictions.
- Choose the apps, content types and settings that you want to restrict when you enable restriction.
Once you move the slider to turn off particular apps, it will be invisible on your app drawer, and they won’t be accessed by anyone you don’t authorize (your children). You can also try the iTunes parental controls settings for music, podcasts, TV shows and other videos that you don’t want to be visible to your kids.
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Evan
February 13, 2013 at 3:15 pm
When the collapse between my little nephew and my iPhone after all has happened I just put a plane mode because my only fear is that he can call someone…
Ravi
February 13, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Are there any Apps for iPhone that after certain “Uncertain Passcode Typing” can turn off the display for a Minute or so?
Nicholas Collins
February 13, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Another good thing to add that I missed for a long time is to enable \”Guided Access\” in the General Settings under Accessibility. Once enabled, you can triple press the home button to turn it on, selectively turning off the hardware buttons (like volume and home to exit the app), touch gestures (to keep them from accidentally exiting that movie you just put on to keep them entertained), and motion (to prevent them changing the screen orientation… useful for apps like Disney Junior that exit full screen mode for the video when in portrait). It is protected with a 4 digit passcode, so as long as your kid doesn\’t figure out the code, you can put on a movie or game and they\’re stuck in it until you decide to let them out. This also works best if you turn off multi-touch gestures in the General Settings as well, to prevent your little one from swiping his hand across the screen and accidentally triggering the four finger gesture to switch apps.
Mark
February 13, 2013 at 4:36 pm
This is a very good idea. My five year old niece once placed an order at one of the major shopping channels by copying the motions she saw her mother do.
James
February 15, 2013 at 9:26 am
Thanks a lot for these tips, my niece always play with the talking tom on the phone & in the process of findng that cat she does a lot of mess up with my Apps. You have shared some good points, thanks for sharing.
Mark Milligan
March 11, 2013 at 4:59 am
Hey these are the good ideas, thanks a lot for sharing it. Enjoyed reading your article Christine. Your Post is appreciated.