Using Parental Controls to Protect Your Kids

Both iTunes and your iPhone have built-in parental controls with a wide range of settings you can use to protect your kids from downloading movies, apps, or songs you’d prefer they didn’t download. Luckily, it’s not just a Yes/No proposition, because there are options for choosing the ratings of the movies they can download from the iTunes Store, and whether they can download songs with explicit lyrics or not. In iTunes, press Command-, (comma; PC: Ctrl-,) to open the Preferences dialog, and click on Parental at the top. After you choose your settings, be sure to click the Lock icon in the bottom left to keep your kids from changing them. On your iPhone, you turn this feature on (and choose your personal options and password) by tapping on the Settings app, then tapping on General, and tapping on Restrictions. Now tap on the Enable Restrictions button at the top. After you set a passcode, a list of things you can restrict appears below what is now the Disable Restrictions button. By default, it restricts everything (installing apps, buying movies, you name it). To turn off a restriction, just tap on the ON button next to it. Scroll down further for a list of Allowed Content options, where you can set ratings for things they purchase.