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Writer's pictureJill McMahon

Easy Way to Manage Screen Time on the iPhone and Google Pixel

Updated: Nov 4



This pic was from 2018, many moons ago before either of our boys had a smart phone. Now they're 13 and 16, so we've had years to flounder through the dark, murky world of parental screen time management. We've made plenty of mistakes, like allowing Finn a phone at the end of 6th grade, which we now know was WAY too early. We've learned from this and are holding off on a phone as long as we can with Henry, now in 8th grade. And yet, Henry does have a Google Pixel he uses for the camera and music, so it still requires supervision since he can also access games and all the other distraction apps when he's home, connected to our wifi.


This past summer, I became aware that our boys were constantly grabbing their phones throughout the day to "just look something up real quick" or "Mom, check out this video of a guy hugging a grizzly," or "Google, why are Russian bears so friendly?" We had family screen time limits (no screens until after 5pm), but with phones, it was almost impossible to keep track of how often they were actually on them. I realized this appendage needed to be removed. So, I did some research and was happy to learn that they've made some developments in setting screen time limits on phones. The best news - it's free and super easy. I will share the step-by-step instructions on how to do it.


If you and your child have an iPhone:


First, you'll need to set up Family Sharing, by starting a family group. One person will be the organizer of the group (manager of screen time, purchases, etc.). Here are detailed instructions from the Apple Support page:


  1. Open the Settings app, then tap your name.

  2. Tap Family (or Family Sharing), then tap Set Up Your Family.

  3. Follow the onscreen instructions to set up your family and invite your family members.

  4. To invite family members, open the Settings app, then tap Family.

  5. Tap the Add Member button.

  6. If your child doesn't have an Apple Account, tap Create an Account for a Child. But if your child already has an Apple Account, tap Invite People. They can enter their password used for their Apple Account on your device to accept the invitation.

  7. Now that you've set up Family Sharing, you can set up parental controls and screen time limits. I'll explain how to do both of these, but here are direct links to the Apple Support page for setting up Parental Controls and the Apple Support page for setting up Screen Time.

  8. For parental controls, go to Settings, then select Screen Time. Under Family choose your child's name. Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions and set the age appropriate limit to ensure that your child won't be watching any inappropriate content.

  9. To set screen time limits, go to Settings, then select Screen Time. Under Family choose your child's name. Here you can create a Downtime schedule for your child's phone. During Downtime, they will only be able to text and call from their phone. Apps will not work. We have downtime set on our kids' phones all day and night except for 5:30 - 8:30 PM. So basically, they can only use the apps on their phones between those three evening hours.

  10. The great thing about iphones, is that you can set them to allow certain apps all the time. For example, on Finn's phone, we have apps like Google Classroom, Spotify and his bus app set to Always Allow. Even though his phone may be in Down Time, he can still access the apps he needs during the day for school.

  11. You can also set different time limits on each app. Before doing this, we had an open conversation with Finn about how much time felt like a healthy amount on Instagram, YouTube, etc. We came to mutual agreements on these limits (that everyone felt good about) and set them up under Screen Time, then App Limits.

  12. There will be times when you'll want to gift your child extra screen time or more time on a specific app, like if they have a bus ride to a soccer game and all of their friends are playing a game together. This is super easy to do. Your child just needs to tap on the app, and then send a request to use it (you'll receive a text message that will allow you to approve either 15 minutes, one hour, or unlimited time on the app for that day). You can also turn off Down Time altogether on your child's phone by going through Screen Time, Downtime, then selecting Ignore Downtime Until Scheduled. The following day, it will return to the set schedule.


If your child has a Google Pixel, you can manage screen time through Google's Family Link.

If you have an iPhone, but your child has a Google Pixel (this is the story for me and Henry), just download the Family Link app on your iPhone, then add your child as a family member. Through this app, you can manage their Parental Controls, Downtime, Daily Limits, and App Limits, just like you can with the iPhone. Unfortunately, they don't have the Always Allow feature for apps, so whenever Henry wants to listen to Spotify on his Pixel, I have to unlock downtime on the entire phone. Hopefully Google will resolve this at some point. Here is the Google support page with screen time management instructions.


Having these screen time management tools has made a world of difference for our family. We no longer have to remind our kids to "just put the phone down" because they're just not picking them up anymore. Of course, no system is perfect, but it really has helped with our screen time sanity as parents.


If your child is still young and phone-free, but you want help to manage other sorts of technology, here's an idea I came up with when our boys were younger called the Tech-no Box.


I hope this is helpful to you and if you have questions, please respond to this email and I'll do my best to help you out!



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