Screen time keeps turning off

I found this works as well. Turn screentime off on all devices, including parents’ devices. Then on the child’s device turn on screentime and set it up. Doing it this way the child will NOT be able to request more time by sending the parent a request. The parent will have to enter the passcode directly on the child’s device to allot more time after downtime. I’ve been doing this for over a week now with no glitches. Not ideal but at least they are safe until apple fixes this.

Just reposting a reply for maximum visibility. This work around worked for me:

Turn screentime off on all devices, including parents’ devices. Then on the child’s device turn on screentime and set it up. Doing it this way the child will NOT be able to request more time by sending the parent a request. The parent will have to enter the passcode directly on the child’s device to allot more time after downtime. I’ve been doing this for over a week now with no glitches.

None of the suggestions for fixes works for me. Apple really needs to sort this. I got Apple devices for this feature and it’s driving me nuts as my kids need their screen time blocked at certain times 😡

Yes it looks like it is a hit or miss. I have two devices and it seems that screen time is working properly on one device but not on the other one. I tried to compare but haven’t found the difference. Very frustrating. I switched to iOS thinking they were more reliable and stable.

I keep trying to keep on top of screen time turning off, now I find it includes the sites I don’t want my 14 year old to visit. Turns out that when screen time turns itself off he has been watching videos of adults engaging in adult activities . The word is not even allowed to be typed here so why is apple not doing anything to protect our children. if it’s that dirty of a word shouldn’t they be paying attention to this?

[Edited by Moderator]

That’s exactly what happened to me. My daughter is 22 with special needs and hers turned off and she was at her day program and apparently they had a good time “googling” things inappropriate. I purposely had internet app removed via parental controls and those things blocked but as I’ve said 100 times - it either kicks off or she’s figured out you can turn it off or reset it and bypass parental controls since this glitch. UGHHHH.

Mine was working for a few days and now it’s all messed up again. I didn’t change anything. My son is diabetic and uses his phone as a medical device. And this screen time issue makes it difficult and or non functional as a diabetic management device. So not only are our children undergoing possible psychological damage but possibly physical damage as well. Apple, do you not care?

@tomfromsewickley - great idea! Everyone, be sure to paste the URL to this thread in your submission. I described the issue and told them to come here to see the multitude of people having the same issues.

Apple Senior advisor did tell me Apple is aware of this issue and is having engineers work on it. Hopefully a software update soon. Advisor did share a workaround which has been successful: "RESET ALL SETTINGS" on all of the kids devices (not erase device and not on parent's devices). Kid's alarms, wifi, (re-enter apple password), wallpapers, etc will need to be start from scratch, but it will keep all of it's data. Fingers crossed.

She said not to do on computers, imacs, macbooks, etc. it'll erase it. Ipads and phones only.

So many of us have the same issue, and there is not any resolution in this thread. Calling Apple support doesn't work. They just go through all the steps to troubleshoot but the same problem happens. There are so many of us so many! Why???

this makes everything so much harder. The whole point of having an iPad is that you can control the kids usage. And this totally throws it off.

I have sorted it over a week ago with solution given few posts above. I’ve struggled for months. But this solution not being perfect but works.

turn off screen time on all devices. Your own and kids so it’s off everywhere.

Turn it on only on kids devices then. Set up all for kids devices. Leave it off on parents devices.

this way they can not ask for more time and instead must come down to you and ask for more by putting screen time passcode. It works over a week now and won’t reset anymore.

hope that helps.

Its not perfect as I can’t control it via my iPhone or see what they do but at least I can control them and limit what they do.

Same problem as everyone else. Screen time and content and safety restrictions turn off automatically at different time. Like others, I have to re-set them several times a day on 2 iphones. Updated to latest software, powered phones on and off, Called Apple Support twice - didn't fix the problem. Also, hoping for a fix soon

Tried getting Apple to help me resolve it the other day, was pointless, they seemed not to believe that I was even having this issue. One of the kids phones was on a slightly older OS (16.2?) so they said that’d be the issue (which is obviously not the issue and would be ridiculous even if it was) so I reluctantly agreed to go off and do the update. No difference obviously. I’ve done my twice-weekly re-putting in of the settings and watching one of the devices turn it all off in front of me. I despair! But at least this forum brings me reassurance that I’m not mad!

I am so beat down by this. Some days it’s perfect and working like it should be. Other days I’m turning screen time back on every single hour. I too busy to be updating settings hourly. Really hoping the next update addresses this finally.

This has been a problem for many many months - I now have an 14 pro and updated software to 16.3.1 and it is happening constantly. This is very dangerous and give parents a false sense of security that their children are protected and/or limited. One of the main reasons we bought iPads & iPhone for our kids was the ease of being able to set screen-time and other protections. Apple is failing all of us. This is a big problem that Apple needs to fix immediately.