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Posts Tagged ‘apple’
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Childproofing Your Phone: ATT Smart Limits for Wireless
By Daddy Clay Friday, July 31st, 2009
The phone in my son’s pocket chirped about every five seconds, and everyone giggled. His friend was pestering him with a comical stream of text messages. It was funny, but also troubling, and it sent me scrambling to find ways to appropriately monitor and limit my son’s cell phone use. What I discovered was ATT’s Smart Limits for Wireless.
Recently my wife got a Blackberry from her place of work. She rarely used her “family phone” even before she got the smartphone, but we decided about a year ago to upgrade to a rugged, shock and water resistant Samsung Rugby because we anticipated our son using the phone situationally. Now, with the arrival of the Blackberry, the Samsung has become Bubba’s phone.
My oldest is eleven, headed off to middle school, so now seems like a reasonable moment for him to have a phone, but having recently been burned by going over my minutes, I wanted restrictions on the phone use. Unlike Apple devices, the Samsung does not have onboard parental controls to limit web access or store purchases. After a few minutes exploring the ATT website I came across the “Smart Limits for Wireless” program.
The program costs $9.99 per month and offers parents the ability to limit the number of text messages, data usage and store purchases, to filter web content and to set time restrictions on outbound calls (with exemptions for approved numbers).
I configured Bubba’s phone as follows:
-200 texts per month (our plan limit)
-Data usage allowed: 0 kb/mo (aka internet off)
-Purchases in ATT store: $0/mo (aka store access denied)
-Outbound calls blocked after 9 on weeknights, 10:30 on weekends (with exemptions for our phones, an essential feature)
-I activated the internet filtering (redundant since he has no data allotment)
Curiously, the program does not allow for limiting inbound calls, so the phone still needs to be out of the child’s room at night. I wonder why this restriction is not available. Clearly they are able to exempt family contacts and 911. Why not apply this to inbound calls?
I look forward to reporting on how well this program helps my son to use his phone responsibly.
Looking to the future, I’m eligible to upgrade my first generation iPhone at the subsidized prices and will probably do so in the next six months. Should I pass along my old iPhone to my son? The expense of the data plan would be partially offset by canceling the Smart Limits program. I feel pretty comfortable with the built in parental controls on those devices, but an iPhone is a pretty powerful device to hand over to a pre-teen.
I guess we’ll keep an eye on how well he manages the Samsung over the next few months.
[update: Bubba called me this morning before dawn wondering why he couldn't use his phone to call his grandmother (he's on vacation -- I'm not). Guess I'll be setting those morning hours a little earlier. But it works as advertised.]
Parental Controls: iPod Touch
By Daddy Clay Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Recently Daddy Troy has posted a number of Apple product reviews on his show: Garageband, iPhoto, and the iPod touch. The latter inspired this post because, like Daddy Troy, I’ve been seeing more and more kids with these gadgets. On a recent multi-family outing, I saw kids as young as 3 playing simple games for the iPod Touch. In all honesty, the Touch may be the best game system for kids on the market because of the combination of music, video and gaming possibilities. We have both a Nintendo DSi and a 16G iPod Touch in our house, and the kids have used them about equally at this point. (I’ll do a head to head comparison soon.)
I have no problem with younger kids playing iPod Touch games, in moderation. Isn’t the fine motor skill involved better for a three year old than watching Teletubbies? What concerns me more, actually, are parents giving a Touch to an older kid. Bubba’s age — 10 years old and up. I worry that some parents may think of it as an iPod and not realize that the little gizmo is actually a powerful little computer, capable of surfing the web, shopping on the iTunes store, and sending and receiving emails.
Thankfully, Apple has been extremely thoughtful in designing the parental controls for this device.
Tap the Settings icon, then the General tab, then the Restrictions tab to get to the main parental control panel. Once there you’ll be prompted to set a four digit security code. The panel allows you to disable explicit downloads, the Safari browser, YouTube access, iTunes and the App store can be turned off as well. I have all of these in the off position. If the kid wants to shop for music or a new app, I will enable them temporarily and supervise. Turning the app store and iTunes off is a bit redundant, because the account on the Touch is mine and they don’t know that password. Truly tech savvy kids might be able to create their own accounts, but that’s for another post.
As with all iPods, you can also limit the maximum volume. This is REALLY important to do, especially if you are going to let younger kids use in-ear headphones (probably not a good idea to begin with, the speakers are adequate for the simple games).
Again from the home menu, tap the Settings button, then the music tab, then the Volume Limit tab. Again it prompts you to password protect this setting. I adjust the maximum down 25-35%. I’ve never had a kid complain that they can’t hear it.
I did enable email, and set up Bubba’s gmail account on the iPod Touch. I do wish that the iPod touch Mail had the same parental controls that the desktop does. On the computer, I have to approve all the email addresses he is allowed to communicate with. So I have to check the emails on the touch every so often if I want to supervise these communications.
Soon I’m going to do a post of creating iTunes accounts for kids — when and how — because I’m seeing DRM problems on the horizon as my son begins building his own music collection.
Do you have any thoughts on the iPod Touch for kids and the use of the parental controls?
