Apple and Google's parental controls bring mobile phones closer to children
The battle between those in favour of children using mobile phones and those who prefer to wait until they are almost of age is being resolved in favour of the former. Everyone has their own motives and reasons for bringing technology closer to young people or for keeping them away. Parental control is the key.
There is no doubt that we live in the age of technology and that it has made our lives much easier. We have gone from writing on paper to typewriters, computers, laptops and now we can dictate texts to a mobile phone. Watches no longer just tell the time, they measure our heart rate, and they can also alert us if we lead a sedentary life. We use our mobile phones to do our shopping, sell what we no longer use, communicate with friends on the other side of the world or order a taxi.
Keeping children away from technology is very difficult. We cannot expect a baby to eat thanks to watching pictures on a tablet, but prevent them from pretending later on that they don't know what that is. Nor is it possible for children to sit quietly for a while while their parents talk to other adults on a mobile phone, but then not ask for it again until the next meal.
Education includes teaching children how to have a mobile phone or tablet. The police go to many schools to warn minors that WhatsApp can be used to send messages from friends, jokes or memes, but also to warn them about the dangers that can destroy lives. If a child wants a mobile phone, he or she must be taught the responsibility of having one at any age. Younger children will be limited in terms of hours, games and places of use, while older children will be able to access other applications under parental supervision. The law sets the limit for being a user of TikTok, WhatsApp or Instagram at 13 years of age. In other words, minors under that age should not have accounts on social networks or publish content. But, as with everything, there are nuances. A single-parent family with two children under the age of 13 can provide these children with a mobile phone to communicate with them if they have to stay home alone at some point, for example. Prohibitions should not be radicalised.
Apple and Google know that children use iPads, iPhones and other Android devices. They are also aware that parents cannot assume their digital presence on a device that is going to be hooked to games or Peppa Pig videos or Twitch live streams. On the one hand, it is very difficult to segment the tastes of an adult who goes from watching football or politics videos on YouTube to episodes of Paw Patrol or TikTok choreographies. On the other hand, they create a young user with their own email that will be a potential consumer of their ecosystem in the future. Everybody wins. Nobody loses.
Google launched Family Link in 2017 although its use was not included natively in Android 10 until 2019. It is split into two apps, one for parents, which is installed on their phones, and one for children's devices. Its functions include restricting content, websites and apps, managing screen time, locating phones via GPS and downloading educational apps from the Play Store with prior permission from guardians.
To set up this system, parents will have to set up a Google account for their children and specify that they are minors and that this account is associated with that of an adult. From that moment on, the terminal will be associated with the child with all the restrictions that the parents decide, but without them appearing or their data, photos, e-mails or calendar being synchronised with the terminal. As a curiosity, Google asks when creating the account what they want to do with the usage data when the child turns 18: destroy it or make it part of their digital past.
Apple's parental control system is called In the Family. It was launched for a purely commercial purpose. For families to share subscriptions to music, photos, iCloud or series, but over time it has become a powerful weapon to control the use of iPhones and iPads.
Parents also create an account for their children and detail that they are minors and that they are associated with their user. They will decide if they want to share any of their subscriptions with them and whether or not to validate the apps they download. It can also be used to locate minors if they use their mobile phones alone outside the home.
The idea is for children to have their own user on the devices that their parents allow them to use and that have the appropriate restrictions for their age. Parental control cannot only be limited to a few digital restrictions, it is also necessary to spend time with them with these devices and teach them about the environment, promote games they can learn something from, music, creative videos... Children are children of their time, just as their parents were. Many used to spend their idle hours playing PC Football or the Sims, now it's their turn to play Toca Boca, Roblox or watch TikTok. It's a fact of life.