Do not disturb iOS 16–please bring back the simple toggle!

That will do the trick, but if you are sharing an Apple ID with them that is a BIG No-No! Apple IDs are personal; they shouldn’t be shared any more than you would share a toothbrush. If you share an Apple ID with someone else many bad things will happen, much worse than DND. Each user should have their own Apple ID, then you can create Family Sharing→What is Family Sharing? - Apple Support. That way you can share what you want to share and not share what you don’t want to share.

It is OK to share an Apple ID among devices used by one person, such as an iPhone, an iPad and a Mac; in fact, it is a very useful thing to do. But not between devices used by different people.

Here is Apple’s FAQ: https://appleid.apple.com/faq/#!&page=faq. See the 4th bullet item.

And here is Apple's expansion of what I've posted→Make sure that each family member has a unique Apple ID - Apple Support

If you have used DND in the past it may have “imported” your settings. To fix that:

Do Not Disturb setup has been made much more flexible, but this has come at the cost of much more complication. To get it working again, do these steps ONCE:

• Tap Settings
• Tap Focus
• Tap on any Focus settings that you will never use and remove them (you can add them back later if you change your mind, and even create new, custom ones)
• Tap Do Not Disturb
• Tap People
• Tap Allow Notifications From
• If anyone is listed who should not call you when DND is on delete them; if you don’t want any calls from anyone, any time, delete all people
• Tap the dropdown next to Allow Calls From and choose Allowed People Only
• Optionally, tap on Apps, then Allow Notifications From and don’t add any apps.

All of the above is a one-time setup. After that, turn DND on or off with the Control Center Focus button. You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to:

Settings/Focus/Do Not Disturb/Set a Schedule.

The simple toggle is there, it was just moved to the Control Center - circled in green below:

Saintapp wrote:

Thank you. Yes. I’ve done that too. But if I touch my phone anywhere after turning DND on with the method you described, DND turns back off. Before ios16 I could do anything on my phone with DND on and it wouldn’t turn off unless I toggled it.

Strange. When I turn on DND it stays on until I turn it off. I can do anything with my phone and DND stays on.

Saintapp wrote:

Thank you. I checked the settings. Everything was already set to allow no one for anything. However, I did notice a setting that might have helped. The setting “share across devices” was on. I suppose the settings were being shared with my kids and husband and iPad, and so on and vice versa. So I turned off “share across devices” and I’m crossing my fingers that will do the trick.

"Share across devices" only applies to devices that are logged into the same Apple ID. If the devices used by your spouse and your children are using your Apple ID (or you're using theirs), that could explain a lot of issues. Apple IDs are designed to be used by one person only.

Saintapp wrote:

Yes. Our family shares an Apple ID and it does cause a lot of issues. I didn’t realize til I saw the “share across devices” setting that it would cause an issue with do not disturb. So far it seems to have fixed it but I’ll update tomorrow after testing it overnight.

Sharing an Apple ID will cause problems. Set up Family Sharing, and migrate to individual accounts.

Thank you for posting this. As a light user of my iPhone the change Saintapp detailed has also been very frustrating for me. The whole Focus > Do Not Disturb feature was much easier (thought that was iOS strength) before I "upgraded" from iOS 14 to 16.

And (as it confused me), within that oval-shaped control, a tap within the circle toggles DND. A tap within the rest of the oval opens controls related to DND and Focus.