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018: Controlling digital safety and screen time
565 Plays6 years ago
This episode will clarify the options you have to manage how you and your children use their screens.
There are all kinds of connected devices in our homes: tablets, smartphones, laptops, televisions, gaming consoles and more. Dinah and Mia give you some tools and tips to help keep your children safer online and also help provide screen time limits.
Mia and Dinah talk about resources like Common Sense Media that you can use to decide on which games and apps to download for your children. They also discuss how as your children get older it is more important to make sure you have enabled the parental controls on all the devices they access.
They discuss tips relating to:
- Setting up individual profiles for your children and using family sharing settings for Apple and Google
- Using Screentime in Apple devices (iOS 9 and above)
- Using Content & Privacy Restrictions in older Apple devices
- Using parental controls for your PC and gaming consoles
- Setting up profiles for Netflix and other streaming accounts
- Password protection and staying one step ahead of your digital native children.
They also discuss some options for improving security at the router level including upgrading your router or adding additional gadgets to control all the devices connected to your home internet connection.
LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEKDinah’s daughter had cooked dinner based on the family meal planner without being asked
Mia is currently applying for a new role at work and she is able to use the CV she had prepared by an outsourcer earlier this year
LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEKDinah talks about channel confusion caused when groups of friends move between various communication channels like email, WhatsApp and text messages.
POWER TOOL10% Happier Podcast Episode on Digital Minimalism When - The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink
RESOURCESAustralian Parents Council - Recommended Screentime Raising Children - digital safety and screen time strategies eSafety - Office of the e-safety commissioners Common Sense Media - Aged Based Media Reviews Guide to Screentime functionality for Apple Devices Parental controls for older Apple devices that don't support Screen Time Circle - Screen time management and parental control device that controls wifi access and displays usage history
SHAREPlease head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
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Transcript
Introduction: Apps and Parenting
00:00:00
Speaker
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00:00:21
Speaker
Download the Kroger app now to save big. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Must have a digital account to redeem offers. Restrictions may apply, see site for details. This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips, and tools to tackle your life more efficiently, to save your time, your money, and improve your household harmony. I'm Dinara Roberts, an operations manager with two children who definitely need help setting boundaries on screen time.
00:00:49
Speaker
and I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer. And the other day, my eight-year-old emailed me from her iPad and I had no idea she even knew how to do that. This app will clarify the options you have to manage how your kids use their screens.
Screen Time Statistics and Guidelines
00:01:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Lifehacks. There are all kinds of devices in our homes, tablets, smartphones, laptops, TVs, gaming consoles, and even more. And even if you're digitally savvy, it can feel almost impossible to know how to keep your kids safe online.
00:01:25
Speaker
At the moment in Australia, 67% of primary school kids and 36% of preschoolers have their own mobile screen-based device. And 43% of kids really use screen-based devices at bedtime. And on average, kids spend 32 hours a week on screens at home. And these are stats from the Royal Children's Hospital.
00:01:46
Speaker
We wanted to cover this episode, not necessarily because we want to talk about parenting strategies and how to balance screen time in your household with other activities. We really wanted to focus on how you can ensure that the devices that your kids are using aren't going to lead them into gross areas of the internet and they're not using it inappropriately, that you are confident in some parameters around the way that they're using it.
00:02:15
Speaker
There are lots of great guidelines out there. So the Australian Parenting Council, they have recommendations for how much screen time is appropriate for Australian kids. I actually recommend that under two years old have zero screen time. That's including TV, everything, DVDs, computers, two to five years, less than one hour per day and five to 17 years, less than two hours per day.
00:02:41
Speaker
And when Diana and I wrote those stats, what did you say, Diana? That's completely unrealistic. So if you need some ideas about strategies to curb the use, I would recommend that you go to the Raising Children website or the eSafety Commissioner website or the Royal Children's Hospital website. Today, we're really going to focus on what you actually need to do on those devices to keep them safe.
Managing Children's Devices: Tips and Tools
00:03:10
Speaker
And some of those things will also help you with the time limits. Your kids, what kinds of devices are they using? So we have now got a phone for the oldest one. Then we have iPads, computers, and we also have an Xbox gaming console. And in addition to that, we're also using Netflix on our TV and the kids also access YouTube through the TV. What about you, me? Yeah, my kids both have hand-me-down iPads from grandparents.
00:03:40
Speaker
They're really old bottles of iPads, iPad 2. So on those, they play games, they have access to Netflix and YouTube Kids. And apparently somehow my daughter has worked out how to message me and email people. So what I thought were pretty locked down iPads, I had to sort of revisit. My youngest child actually airdropped me something from his iPad to my Mac. And I was like,
00:04:08
Speaker
When my daughter did email me, she emailed me a photo of her brother's bottom.
00:04:15
Speaker
I'm what to say. Exactly. Where you're like, oh, I'm glad she said it to me. And I said, how did you know what my email address was? And she said, I just started typing and the suggestive, you know, the predictive text came up and offered her a whole range of emails that somehow, you know, contact lists that I don't know how was on her iPad because she has her own iPad, you know, Apple ID. Yeah. This took some investigation. Definitely.
00:04:44
Speaker
And I think it's one of those things that evolves quite quickly because I think that not only does technology evolve, but all of a sudden you get one more device into the house and the kids, you know, really figure out how to use it. And they sometimes can just leave you a bit behind. That certainly happened to us with the Xbox. When the kids were little, how did you, before they, you know, could hack passwords and air droppy things, how did you decide what was going to be safe for them? How did you restrict what they were using?
00:05:15
Speaker
I think when they're smaller, it's really about restricting the access of what apps they're allowed to use. And I think you're much more watching what they're doing with the devices. And I often use that website, Common Sense Media, to really research various apps to decide whether those were things that were actually going to be useful and valuable and age appropriate for them. And I still use that quite a lot, even for movies and other things, just to really understand whether they should be watching it. Do you use that website too, Mia?
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's a fantastic resource because it covers not just digital stuff, it covers books and music and games and, as you said, movies. And there's usually reviews from someone from common sense media. But then there's actual comments from parents from all over the world. And actually kids can also put in their five cents worth about the suitability of an app or a piece of media. So they'll talk about what age
00:06:14
Speaker
Level is appropriate. I talk about if there's violence or sexy stuff or good themes or good values and that kind of thing. So that's what I've used to decide if an app is suitable to download for the kids to use.
00:06:27
Speaker
But as they've got older, really, I've had to start to move to think about the parental controls within the devices. That's really been the next step for us. And interestingly, the thing that's happened most recently for people who use Apple devices is that for people who've got more recent devices, the latest version of iOS gives you this screen time functionality.
00:06:51
Speaker
which is really quite powerful and amazing. I highly recommend researching how to set that up. The biggest tip that I've got for people who are looking at using that screen time is to make sure that each of your children do have their own Apple ID because often when you do do the hand-me-down iPads,
00:07:10
Speaker
Kids are using an iPad with your own Apple ID in there and that creates all sorts of complexity. And that certainly did for us because my son was using an iPad that had my Apple ID on it and he'd been using it for a number of years. And so all the progress on the games that he'd been using is saved under that Apple ID. And so it makes it really difficult to control that device.
00:07:35
Speaker
The screen time is incredible because it allows you to look at the other Apple IDs associated in your family and set restrictions on the amount of usage they can have on the device itself, but then also at the app level.
00:07:54
Speaker
It allows you to control the usage. Yeah, not only does it allow you to control the usage, but it allows you to control what apps that they can have access to. So you can even shut down access to Safari if you don't want them just surfing the web, which might be appropriate, particularly for younger children. If you only want them to use specific apps that you've downloaded onto the iPad, then you can really just shut it down from them being able to use anything else. And you can also not only just shut down the total amount of usage, you can
00:08:24
Speaker
shut down when they can access the device. So making really strict bed times, for example, that you can't use it after a certain time at night. And for me, what's been really useful is can't use it before a certain time in the morning because my kids used to get up and then straight away get on a device before I'd even managed to get out of bed. So now I can really stop them from being incentivized to wake up early to turn on a device.
00:08:48
Speaker
The top tips are, first of all, make sure your children have their own Apple ID. And the second thing you need to do is to set up the family sharing. So those things won't talk about them in detail, but those are the two most important steps before you start to set up the screen time functionality within your Apple devices.
00:09:06
Speaker
So for my devices,
Parental Controls: Platforms and Profiles
00:09:08
Speaker
they're so old that they can't support the current iOS. So I was so disappointed. I was like, screen time, haha. And then it's like, no, no screen time for you. So what I had to do was go into the settings of the iPads, go into general.
00:09:24
Speaker
and you can enable restrictions. And this enables you to go in and basically turn off all the apps that you do not want your kids to access. So no Safari, no FaceTime. I don't want them to be buying music or downloading anything through iTunes or the app stores. I don't want them to access news or podcasts. I don't want them to be able to make in-app purchases without me knowing about it.
00:09:50
Speaker
And you can also set ratings. So for the content, you can go through and say, I only want PG, or I want 12 plus for the apps, or you can restrict websites. You can also make sure that they don't have access to things like contacts, that they can't share things, they can't share their location. All of this is done through the general restrictions area. And then when you go into some of the other apps specifically, things like mail or
00:10:18
Speaker
So far, you can go down and restrict within there as well. I've had a blog that I followed to do this, so I'll have a link to that in the show notes. If you're on Android devices, there are options to do similar things. So both within, there's a family link app that you can download. And in addition, Microsoft also have a similar sort of family sharing
00:10:42
Speaker
functionality that Apple have, which you can then use to control computers. If your child is using a computer and potentially it's a shared family computer, set them up with their own Windows profile and their own email address so that you can link that to a parent email address through a Microsoft account, which also allows you to set a whole bunch of parental controls in relation to that account.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess the things to focus on when you're looking at a computer, again, the games that they're using, you want to have some kind of restrictions around what they're allowed to download. You want to think about the browser that's on there and whatever browser you're using. And I would recommend finding something other than Chrome because it doesn't actually have very good parental controls.
00:11:27
Speaker
looking at those browser settings and make sure there's some kind of safe browsing mode or that you can restrict the sort of content so they're not gonna wander into porn or other dodgy kinds of sites. And then again, you're thinking about the email apps or whatever kind of messaging apps you have on there. Do they have access to them? They do have access. Do you also want to have access? So you can see what kinds of messages are floating around.
00:11:55
Speaker
What about on the Xbox? So yeah, so with the Xbox, it's really using Xbox is owned by Microsoft. So you're really then linking into the Microsoft parental controls. And again, this is one where we've fallen foul of when we originally bought the Xbox. We used my email address and my son was using that email address, which we thought was probably safer because we were controlling the emails that were being received. But now what that means is it's
00:12:22
Speaker
It's much more challenging to set up the parental controls because you can't transfer that account to a new account. So we've now had to set him up on a new account, which means he's lost the progress on some of his games, which wasn't.
00:12:35
Speaker
which is a happy day for him. It was very devastating. And he had to set up a new gamer tag. So that was also frustrating for him. But now that we've done it, it's sort of, you know, starting afresh. And then you use, you can basically set all of those parental controls from within a Microsoft family account. And so the other thing to think about is the streaming, the TV and movie streaming sites. So Netflix, whatever you've got going on, big pond movies,
00:13:05
Speaker
All of those sites have some kind of kids area, but then you can also set up individual profiles and you can set those profiles to be on a kid setting and you can actually nominate whether you want them to see G or PG or what setting of content. So it's crucial.
00:13:23
Speaker
One of the things that's really important with all of this is making sure that your kids don't have access to your passwords. So certainly until quite recently, our kids knew what the passcode was to get into our phones and into the computer, into the family, sort of my account within the computer. And as I've been working on these parental controls and really locking things down, it's made me realize that if I give them access to those passwords,
00:13:49
Speaker
They can easily just log into my phone or my computer and change the settings at will. And as they get older, they get much more savvy. And I noticed the other day when I picked up my son's iPad and I was changing some of the screen time settings that he had tried 17 times to enter the password for screen time. So he has been trying to figure it out based on he knows my password.
00:14:13
Speaker
because he wanted more minutes. Both my husband and I have changed the passwords for our phones so that they can't actually get into our phones to change the settings. And I think as they get older and older, that becomes more and more of an issue. Yeah, like my kids both learned the password to my phone. And up until now, like my son is only in prep and he's only just starting to learn how to read.
00:14:36
Speaker
But now he's really incentivized to read because he can work out with what these different apps are. And my daughter, you know, she used to like to log into my phone and send messages to my husband or photos. But now I also realize that she's scrolling back through messages to people on, you know, random communications I'm having. It's not always appropriate for her to be reading that stuff. And it's not always appropriate, as I've found, for her to be taking photos because sometimes her choice of photo subjects
00:15:05
Speaker
isn't the greatest in terms of post-bath hilarity and hijinks. So yes, I have realised that I'm going to have to change my password probably on a quite a regular basis, which I'm a bit, you know, there's so many passwords to remember and unfortunately that is one that
00:15:25
Speaker
LastPass and Keeper cannot remember for you, but it is worth it. It's definitely worth it. And one of the other things, we probably didn't talk about it earlier, but it was really useful for us was when you add a new device into your house,
Rules and Monitoring: Contracts and Tools
00:15:40
Speaker
to really think about having a really sit down conversation with your child around what's the rules of how that device is going to be used. And in fact, my daughter, she got her first phone about six months ago and we actually made her sign a contract and sounds a bit ridiculous. But really, I was quite concerned about this big step up in her access to this device. And my husband and I talked about it a lot about whether we thought her she was old enough
00:16:08
Speaker
So what we really did was set some really clear criteria. For example, we do not allow her to take her phone into her bedroom. And we basically set the really clear rules that if you breach these rules, then the phone gets taken away. And that's really, really held us in good stead in terms of controlling her with that device. We have had to have the conversation over and over again about why we have limits on screen time. We've talked a bit about the health
00:16:35
Speaker
aspects of it and brain development aspects of it. They really don't care about their brain development. And it's tricky. It's tricky for them to say that they have limits. And I think what's also tricky is that they feel like we don't place limits on ourselves. So it really does, you know, there's some role modeling that also has to happen. If you're on your phone and your devices all the live long day, it's really hard to enforce boundaries for the kids.
00:17:03
Speaker
Diana, I liked that macro thing that you did with the Wi-Fi controls. So not even at a device level, but like an internet level in your house. Yes, I think that this is because I'm less probably worried about the screen time, although that's an issue. But I do think that that's something to sort of have a conversation and, you know, that's a sort of parenting in my view. The real issue for me is making sure that they're not accessing inappropriate content.
00:17:31
Speaker
And so I had originally used within the router that Telstra had provided for my internet connection. They did have some inbuilt parental controls and so I had been experimenting using those. But they were really rubbish. For example, they were blocking me out of Google Drive, which was really frustrating.
00:17:52
Speaker
I had spoken to an expert and she had recommended just ditching the Telstra modem and buying another one. In particular, she mentioned that Netgear have some really good options.
00:18:04
Speaker
When I went and researched a bit further, now you can actually just buy an additional gadget that you connect to your Wi-Fi network that really does the same job without having to completely buy a whole new device. So I have bought a circle, which is actually distributed by Disney, and it's just been an amazing revolution in our house in that it
00:18:28
Speaker
allows us to set parental controls, but it also allows me to see where the kids have been. So I can actually see their history of where they've been on the internet. And it also allows me to connect a number of devices to the same profile. So it allows me to not so much restrict the amount of screen time, but it allows me to restrict the amount of Wi-Fi time.
00:18:51
Speaker
that they get across all of their devices because what I was finding with the screen time is that my son would exhaust his minutes on the iPad then move to the Xbox and then when those were exhausted move to the TV.
00:19:04
Speaker
So now I can really group all those devices under his profile and give him a Wi-Fi limit across all of those devices. So it's sort of another limit. And the other great thing about it is it allows me to control it remotely.
00:19:21
Speaker
So I can actually be at work and I can give them more minutes or I can even turn the whole Wi-Fi off for them if I want them to be doing homework and they're not, you know, and I'm concerned that they're not doing it. I can basically press pause and none of their devices can access Wi-Fi.
00:19:41
Speaker
Oh, the power. Well, it's also great even for dinner time. If I really want them to actually stop, I just don't even have to have the conversation. I just press pause and all the Wi-Fi is like a magic wand and they all come rushing to dinner.
00:19:57
Speaker
That's fantastic. And didn't you for a while change your wipe? This is before you got the circle. You used to change the Wi-Fi password and only when they had completed certain chores did you provide or just change the password every day.
00:20:12
Speaker
I have heard, I have tried that and I've heard lots of people doing that. I've also heard of people taking the cable, like if they go to work during the school holidays, actually taking the cable that connects the modem to the internet and taking it with them because they're concerned about their kids spending all day on devices. So I do think that some of these more softer controls that allow you to control the minutes are really important
00:20:37
Speaker
Or they just make it easier. I do think, though, that kids can figure out how to get around them. So I think you just always have to be, you know, continuously learning and speaking to other people about what they're doing so that you can sort of stay one step ahead of our kids who are digital natives. All right, Donna. So there's a few things there that we're going to link out to in show notes so people can follow step by step through some of these instructions.
Life Admin Successes and Challenges
00:21:02
Speaker
And I think it's been a while. Do you have a life admin high of the week?
00:21:06
Speaker
Oh, yes, I do actually have a really great one. So our last episode was about meal planning, which is something that we've been doing in our family for a long time. But I actually came home the other night a little bit late. And my daughter had actually looked at the meal planner on the fridge and had actually cooked the dinner based on what was on the meal planner without being asked. And I said to her, what are you doing? She said, I was hungry. So I thought I'd cook dinner. I thought, wow, gee, this meal planner, that is brilliant.
00:21:37
Speaker
Fantastic. And what about you, Maeve? Do you have one? So a life had been high. We're having a restructure at work. And it's one of those restructures where a whole lot of people, including me, have to reapply for their roles. Or I was on my contract and they've churned it into a, like a continuing position. So it's a new job description. I actually don't even have a job description. Now there is a job description. I'm going to have to apply for my role and
00:22:06
Speaker
I'm so thankful that I went through that CV revision exercise earlier in the year and have all these versions of my CV ready to go. So the whole thing should be pretty seamless. I mean, this could be really sort of stressful time, but I feel quite calm about it because I'm all set and ready to reapply. And that's a win. Yes.
00:22:29
Speaker
How about a low? Has anything been annoying task-wise? Oh, I did have one thing actually. I've got a group of friends who seem to jump about from channel to channel. So what I mean like they send an email and then there's also a WhatsApp group and then there's text messages. And I was trying to find out the details of a plan we'd made and I could not find it because I couldn't remember whether it was in the email trail or in the WhatsApp group or in the
00:22:59
Speaker
I message text group are so annoying. And I just think, oh, why can't we just stay with one channel of communication? I face a little bit of that in my netball team manager role. And whenever I get something sent to me that's not in the WhatsApp group, which is our sort of official comms, I just respond, thanks. I shall put this in the WhatsApp group and follow up there. Just to remind them we're not, you know,
00:23:27
Speaker
Get off this email trail. Let's not start another trail. Let's just go back to what we've established. Yeah, it's very frustrating. How about a powerful book review? What have you been, tech review? I know you've been.
Digital Minimalism and Productivity
00:23:40
Speaker
Listening to a lot of podcasts. I have, and actually just relevant to the episode we've just talked about, I listened to a great podcast episode on the 10% happier podcast about digital minimalism. So there's a really interesting guy, Cal Newport. He's written a number of books around deep work, but he's also written a book around taking like a digital detox.
00:24:03
Speaker
And I really found that really interesting, including some tips around how we should be around our children in relation to our devices. So I highly recommend listening to that episode. I really love that podcast. Anyway. How should we be about that around our children?
00:24:19
Speaker
Not on our devices. Yeah, we shouldn't be on our devices. So really that idea of thinking about when you walk in the house, having a place to put your phone and just actually not using it when you're having family time, which I think it's a trap that's very easy to fall into, but I'm really trying to change my habits. Great. And you, Mia, what's something that you, a power tool or a book? Yeah, I just read
00:24:45
Speaker
A book called When The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink. And it's touched on some things we've read before from different productivity gurus and people like Cal Newport. That idea that during the day, you know, that morning time is for deep work, for analytical thinking and concentration. The afternoons more for creative work and broader thinking.
00:25:08
Speaker
And that you really do need hourly breaks to move your body. Don't just sit there or even stare there. Just move around every hour. Have a proper lunch break to rejuvenate and get that concentration going and get off your device at lunch. Taking your lunch and sitting and staring at your phone and scrolling through stuff is not a proper lunch break. You need to shift your eye gaze.
00:25:31
Speaker
You need to socialize, you need to walk, ideally leading to get out into nature. He also talks about beginnings and midpoints and endings and using sort of strategies of the clean slate at the beginning to mobilize new projects that midpoint you might need to rally or refocus somehow. There's some people who kind of need to wait to crunch time to get motivated, but some people need like a pit stop to refocus.
00:25:57
Speaker
I encourage you to also celebrate and acknowledge endings. Don't just, you know, move on to the next thing. Don't dismiss it or neglect to acknowledge it. Just realize that the way something ends could be the way you actually remember it.
00:26:12
Speaker
I think this is important to think about in terms of all of the projects that we've set out on in the last few months as we've gone through this life admin. If you're thinking about, when am I going to do that thinking time? When am I going to concentrate? How am I going to get myself motivated for the beginning or through a midpoint or to the ending? And I'm thinking this especially because we're going to be doing tax soon and I've got a lot of tax admin
00:26:38
Speaker
sought out to even think about were two years behind and I'm like oh my god so I thought this book was very useful to think about the timing of things.
00:26:47
Speaker
Well, I think that wraps us up for this week. Hope you've enjoyed our ep on digital security. Remember some of our top tips. Consider researching and using resources like Common Sense Media to decide what apps and movies and TV you'll let your kids watch. Use parental controls and profiles within devices to both restrict the amount of screen time, but also what your children can access.
00:27:12
Speaker
And consider using a router or another gadget adding to your existing router to control your Wi-Fi and help keep your kids safe online. If you'd like to join us on our Life Admin journey, please head to our Facebook page, Life Admin Life Hacks, to follow us and share your thoughts on what we're doing and feel free to post any comments or certainly post suggestions that we might be able to use. We hope to see you there.
00:27:38
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. If you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app.