Hi,
Screen Time would appear to have a lot of potential but every time I've tried to use it to regulate kids usage I run into limitations that render it useless.
My kids are online-learning and all I want is to be able to restrict them to the apps/sites they need during the school day. After the school day they can be unrestricted. They both have Macs and iPhones. The problems I have encountered are:
- You can only set a daily time-limit for an app, you can't set a schedule. That's so limiting and stupid. So I can say only 1hr for an app, but I can't say to block it during the school hours 0800-1600 for example.
- The only way I can see to restrict during a schedule is by setting Down Time during the school day 0800-1600 then adding the apps they need as always allowed.
- But you can't add Safari to always-allowed, only 3rd party browsers, so for them to use Safari wouldn't work because they couldn't then use it for online schoolwork.
- But if you get them to use 3rd party browsers and add those to Downtime you can't then blacklist certain websites during the schedule eg Discord, YouTube etc so they can sit there watching YouTube all day long.
- I'd like to block youtube.com website in browser during school hours, but have read so many reports that doing so can also block Google Classroom so I haven't been willing to try yet. Anyone doing this successfully?
I should add that in principle I agree that a technical solution to a behavioral issue is not always the best approach, but in this case I need a technical solution to keep them focused on online school work. Does anyone have a successful setup for this?
Screen Time would appear to have a lot of potential but every time I've tried to use it to regulate kids usage I run into limitations that render it useless.
My kids are online-learning and all I want is to be able to restrict them to the apps/sites they need during the school day. After the school day they can be unrestricted. They both have Macs and iPhones. The problems I have encountered are:
- You can only set a daily time-limit for an app, you can't set a schedule. That's so limiting and stupid. So I can say only 1hr for an app, but I can't say to block it during the school hours 0800-1600 for example.
- The only way I can see to restrict during a schedule is by setting Down Time during the school day 0800-1600 then adding the apps they need as always allowed.
- But you can't add Safari to always-allowed, only 3rd party browsers, so for them to use Safari wouldn't work because they couldn't then use it for online schoolwork.
- But if you get them to use 3rd party browsers and add those to Downtime you can't then blacklist certain websites during the schedule eg Discord, YouTube etc so they can sit there watching YouTube all day long.
- I'd like to block youtube.com website in browser during school hours, but have read so many reports that doing so can also block Google Classroom so I haven't been willing to try yet. Anyone doing this successfully?
I should add that in principle I agree that a technical solution to a behavioral issue is not always the best approach, but in this case I need a technical solution to keep them focused on online school work. Does anyone have a successful setup for this?
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