There are new ways to set boundaries on your kids’ iPhones.
iOS 27, released Monday, is Apple’s AI-ified update to the software brains inside the iPhone. Some changes are available for models as old as iPhone 11.
And, for parents, there are four core changes.
- Screen Time has a redesigned parental dashboard that lets parents adjust a child’s access in the moment.
- Ask to Browse requires kids to get permission before visiting a new website in Safari.
- Time Allowances lets parents set limits for categories of apps, such as social media, games, and entertainment.
- Apple says Communication Safety can now shield children from graphic or violent material, as well as nudity, in shared images, videos, and live FaceTime calls.
Chris McKenna, the founder and CEO of the digital-safety organization Protect Young Eyes, said the changes could help more parents use controls that have long been difficult to navigate.
“Anything that makes parents’ jobs a little bit easier makes the experience of activating parental controls smoother, more intuitive,” McKenna told Business Insider, “I cheer for these kinds of changes.”
He said Screen Time has historically been an outlier in Apple’s otherwise polished ecosystem, calling it “clunky,” especially for parents.
“It involves more steps than are necessary, and really needed a complete revamp,” he added.
McKenna said the more user-friendly design does not solve all of Apple’s parental-control problems. Existing filters can still allow inappropriate content to slip through, he said, and a child deliberately looking for a workaround may still find one.
“What iOS 27 doesn’t fix are all of the circumventions that a kid with intentionality is still going to be able to find,” McKenna said.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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