Parental Control/Game time limiter

This is a user to user forum. The Terms Of Sevice Police are the only "Apples" who monitor this forum.

FWIW, speaking as a parent and grandparent, there is a way to let your offspring safely use anything their little hearts desire, but most of today's "parents" are too selfish, too self absorbed, or too cowardly to do it...

I do like the Kindle app to monitor kids and how long they can use their device. I also agree with clifton that ground rules should be set and followed. Our youngest knows his limits on his ipad. We tell him it's time to shut it off and it goes off. Are we the greatest parents ever? Heck no. But, we started this as soon as he got the ipad. He respects our wishes and shuts it down. Does he like it? Heck no! But, that's the way it goes.

I do understand the search for the app to control usage. I wish Apple had it built in like Amazon.

Hi Pearce,

The idea behind Aftermath is great! Rewarding your kid with iPad time for every solved problem. Currently most educational apps on the iPad are quickly ignored by my kids (they prefer the games). If a software could be created that monitored the time spent with educational apps and converted this time to credit time for gaming this would make the iPad a much more educational device for children. Parents should be able to select which apps to mark as educational and which as games.

Is it really technically impossible to implement this on tablet devices (iPad/ Android tablets). Are there any plans of implementing this? As far as I am aware it is possible to have some rudimentary parental controls using apps like TimeLock. Possibly 15 year old kids can hack it, but for most younger kids it is sufficient.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your comments and interest.

You will notice that this thread has been unfortunately dominated by a tiresome troll. If you contact me directly through the Aftermath site www.getaftermath.com I will be able to give you some responses and possibly some suggestions for the pre-teen problem.

Regards

Pierce

Try an iPhone app called parentkit. I'm Not sure if this app will solve all your problems but it's worth a look.

Hi. You could lock your teen's iPod touch in the find my iPhone app on your device when time's up. Your son will not know the password, but he could create a playlist and listen to music from that or from an iPod touch 5th generation, your son could use Siri to choose his music. Siri is NOT reccomended unless you can hear him all the time.

At bedtime, you could set up guided access in settings>general>accessibility>guided access. Remember to turn on Its passcode and use a different one. You could go to photos with a black wallpaper, and disable all touch,motion,and buttons.

Hope this helps

Galaxy Falls

I've been stumped looking for the same thing. Parentkit just will create times during the day when the apps or music can be used, not a timer. I use BOB on the TV and ComputerTime on the PC and can't believe I can't get something similar for the Ipads.

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this. But one option may be "guided access" in the accessibility settings. This would allow you to restrict him to the music app only. Downfall is you would have to enable it every evening.

I suggest using Parental Timelock app in the App Store.

What it does it that after the specified amount of time the device is locked but listening to music or audio where the screen is turned off does not count towards your usage.

The timer resets automatically each day and is the best option for "hands off" approach to managing usage.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/parental-timelock-time-limit/id689577280?ls=1&mt =8

I would suggest looking at our new app in progress! We are planning to take all of these problems away with one single app. The app is called "Inspire" and is in the beta phase on Android. I am in talks now with a firm to complete the iOS version which will hopefully soon follow!

The video focuses on the learning aspect but the parental controls give the power back to the parents!

-Play time allowance

-bed time

-start time

-Lock out

-messaging to device

All happens on a notification so that we know the child has seen what we have to say.

Please give it a look!

www.GamerParentsInc.com

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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Also as well as an application for iOS, we also have a "black box" that can be plugged into an xbox or any other video feed to take over any electronics that a child may have!

Knowledge Beyond Imagination

Coming soon!

http://www.gamerparentsinc.com

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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Hi! I'm at the moment trying to develop an parental controll app for ipad. We are a group of people that are locking into the possible way of setting an app that will work as a timer where the parent can decide the amount of time the child should have one the device. When the time runs out the the app will shut down the ipad in resting mode, so to open it you ned to sett a 4 digitt pass code. This is from our view the only way to create an app to time controll childrens use of the ipad because other apps cant be runned by others. We are in the starting face of this project and are seeking finance support. If you are interested in helping us you can find our company on www.webportalen.no

We are a Norwegain company that provides homepages and other web products.

Best regards

Martin

Teamaaknes, you may want to look at "Parentkit" it's not free (it's about $40 per year), but I think it already does what your trying to do and more. It's in the Apple Apps store. Also, you can not post this type add in this forum, I'm guessing it will come down shortly. Cheers.

(Struwwwelpeter - love the name! hahah)

Just wanted to add my comments to the thread.

First, apps to do all of this and more have already been created for Android based products. My son (who just turned 7), used to have a Nabi tablet. This is an Android based tablet specifically designed for kids. It comes with a time control app that does, specifically, allow you to assign a specific amount of time to groups of apps, which YOU categorize according to your own needs. It also allows the child to earn more time for one category by using another category for a certain amount of time. For example, your child can earn 30 more minutes of game time by using educational apps for 2 hours, or however you want to set it up.

There were still some significant flaws with the Nabi environment. One major flaw was that it didn't have access to the Google Play Store (although I think that may have changed now). I had sideloaded the Amazon App Store and there is a MAJOR security issue with it, in that it's pretty much impossible to keep your kid from just buying apps whenever s/he feels like it. I had a few encounters with Amazon (and my son) over this and laid down the law regarding purchasing apps that cost money. I was able to disable the in-app purchasing as well, which helped a lot, but he was still able to purchase any free apps he chose to and managed to clog the tablet up with a lot of junk, as well as having the freedom to delete any apps he wanted to.

Well, he ended up cracking the screen and I had full coverage on the tablet (of course), so ended up getting back my full purchase price and decided to buy an iPad Mini for him instead. The iPad solves the app issues and a lot of the restrictions are great. However, the lack of time limits for specific apps is appalling.

For the folks who are whinging around about how we, parents, should simply be more attentive in our discipline, let me tell you why that doesn't really apply here. My kid is homeschooled. A good portion of his educational stuff is online, or through apps on the tablet. He has several hours a day when he is doing school work on his tablet, and he gets to take breaks to watch movies or play games. However, I also run my own business and can't watch over his shoulder every minute. It's just too ****** tempting for a kid to skip the school work they are supposed to be focussing on and go play a game with the volume turned down so you don't realize it. Even at 7, they can be pretty ****** sneaky.

I trust my kid for lots of things, but some temptations are just too great. Apple pushes its products as educational. The schools are now issuing iPads to the students. Considering the focus on education, it just makes sense for Apple to allow development of better Parental Controls for these devices. I purchase the iPad specifically because I felt it was more directed toward education, and a more controlled environment, than the competition. Come on, Apple!!

Gamer Parents Inspire app is coming to the ipad, iPod and iphone this summer!

Features:

-Playtime allowance (set allowable play time before device shuts down)

-bed time (shuts down devices)

-start time (allows entertainment on device to begin at specific time)

-lock out (locks out all devices from entertainment time)

-messaging to device (must respond in order to continue playing)

Also you as a parent can issue assignments directly to his/her device that he/she is playing/working on.

The questions appear and must be answered in order to continue play time on the device.

Assignments can be created or purchased to further educate the student using Inspire.

The children will play,

The children will learn!

Knowledge beyond imagination!

Please check out our website to see how it works!

Thank you,

Gamer Parents Inc.

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