Follow up to my earlier message to describe what I've been doing to date. As mentioned earlier, don't need the "you just need to manage your kids" message. This is hopefully something that could be helpful to others.
My goal as mentioned is to allow kids to use devices during weekends more freely (not completely unrestricted), but tightly restrict what they can do during the week.
Two kids -- 11 and 12.
What I've been doing is this:
* Baseline I've set up restrictions to filter out things as well as I can.
* I've chosen to disallow the browser completely, at all times. If they want to use a web browser, user the Mac that we have in the house, high visibility.
* I've also disabled in-app purchases, and installing / deleting apps. I've also updated their itunes accounts so that they don't have a credit card associated with it. I haven't installed anything recently on these, but if I had to I'd prefer to use a gift card, and give credit to their account that they can then spend without concern of it digging into my credit card.
* I don't want them doing email at all at this point, so I haven't set up an account at all.
* Finally, KEY FEATURE: I've disabled ALL applications by default (other than the default applications). I don't love this, since I can't enable something that I feel would be useful (e.g.: a third party calculator), but it keeps them more focused during the week.
* So in terms of restrictions:
- Restrictions always enabled
- Safari, Facetime, iTunes Store, installing Apps, In-app purchases at base-line are disabled
- All of the rating stuff set to try and filter contetn. And with ios7, you can set it to try to filter adult websites (as noted, I've disabled browsers in general, but good to turn that on as well in case I temporarily enable the browser for some reason).
- Twitter, Facebook disabled
- Disable Account changes -- this is important, prevents them from adding new addresses, and from changing certain settings on their accounts
- Cellular Data Use (new to ios7) - I've disabled Cellular completely at times. At other times I've enabled it, but then disabled it for any app that might send a large amount of data. E.g.: in ios7, enable it, then disable for most apps, and then separately go to iTunes and App Store preferences and disable it for that. Finally, in Restrictions, disable changing Cellular settings. >> I've had a couple of times where it was left enabled, and kids allowed it to "update" an app while they were away from the house, and we got close to our data limit (or they were using iRadio, and it started using up data). ios7 has improved things, but its still a pain in the XYZ.
Now, each Friday afternoon, we unlock the existing apps -- that is about the only setting I change (I leave Restrictions on, just change the one setting), and they can then use games and other apps that are installed. Then each Sunday evening, I relock all apps, and they can't. Its a hassle, but somewhat manageable (as long as I remember to do it on Sunday).
When its locked this way, its down to a phone, with iMessage enabled and email enabled or disabled depending on your preference. I want them to be able to use iMessage to communicate with us and others, but have to manually manage the time limits, and periodically review. So what we end up doing is:
* They know I can review their phone's imessage communication, and I do periodically. This is still my biggest concern, so I have to monitor it.
* WHile working on homework , phone has to be visible / plugged in in the kitchen
* Phone has to be plugged in at night by ~8 in kitchen.
Would be a lot easier to manage if
(a) I could set up a profile for these features so that the unlocking and relocking I do each weekend could be handled more easily
(b) once you have a profile, would be great if that could then be scheduled, so that the weekend lock / unlock could be done automatically, and so that iMessage (whether for imessage or sms) could be enabled only at certain times of the day.
(c) would be nice if I could have all iMessage trails (whether done via imessaging or SMS) synced automatically to something I could as a parent review offline. E.g.: website or email notification. Its a hassle to have to review it on their phones, and there is nothing preventing them from deleting message trails theoretically.
(d) the "cellular" settings are improved in ios7, but could be better. E.g.: Should have a Default to On / Default to Off setting, and then you can change settings to override. E.g.: I'd rather default everything to off, and then ONLY turn it on for iMessage. Most of these settings are in the Cellular Settings page, but then you have the settings separately under iTunes and App Store and the restrictions page -- it should all be co-located.
(e) would be nice if I could restrict incoming and outgoing texts to an approved list. You can somewhat do that by limiting contacts, and you can explicitly block addresses, but again, from a kid perspective, I'd rather it be somewhat like the xbox settings where I can approve who they can interact with, and incoming / outgoing requests have to go through me.