Screen Time: Apparent bug with Content & Privacy Restrictions

I’ve tried numerous things like that, none worked. The problem I’m currently having is the downtime slider automatically switches to off after a few seconds .

Likewise the always allowed option doesn’t retain changes.

LOL... I’m not totally ruling out she has tampered with it at some point. Tonight she was innocent, she was sitting next to me not touching her phone and if I hit the back button restrictions did not remain on.

I’ve been struggling with these same issues for months. I’d given up, but this weekend things got bad with my son’s viewing choices so during the confiscation period I went back to trying to enable the screen time/content restrictions. Apple has been no help at all. A friend told me what worked for her had to do with which parent is the organizer, and that it had to be the person whose name is on the account/bills. So we disabled family sharing and set it up anew (for the third time) and following her advice, made my husband the organizer and he designated me a parent/guardian so I could set restrictions. Again, nothing I selected would “stick” on my devices...it seemed to do so on my son’s phone but today they are completely off. He doesn’t know my password (and knows he’d be up sh!ts creek if he removed the restrictions anyway) so I don’t know what else to try. This happens across all devices so clearly it’s not just a problem with one. Any other ideas??

They’ve know about this since October. I don’t think they trying to fix anything. They advertised this great tool, got tons of parents to get new phones for their kids, and now offer no fix. It’s been 5 months...

Yes, but unfortunately they can override these on their own device (in my experience). For example when they reach their limit, a pop up screen appears asking if they would like more time that they can then click and voila (even with the parent code in place)-though haven’t tried this since the most recent update.

Kids are sneaky. They can always figure out some kind of workaround. Even with content restrictions setup with account changes disabled, my daughter has figured out some way to sign the ipad out of my apple id and use her own apple id. I believe that all of the screen time/content restrictions are disabled once you log into the ipad with a new apple id. I have my own theory on how she is doing this, but I am not posting it here since I don't want to give other kids bad ideas.

I also have this problem. Screen Time is now totally worthless for me. My son's phone is completely unrestricted due to the frustrating bug. It happened after he "accidentally" signed out of family sharing. When I put him back in screen time settings are no longer working on his phone or remotely through mine.

You kid isn’t alone in hiding the iPad/iPhone from Parents ... sometimes find my phone works, other time banning them for 1+days helps coerce them into submission.

dont hold your breath with this one , my case has been with Apple Developrs since December . It makes you wonder .... why they removed from the AppStore the only Apos that actually worked !

You are right. I was told that engineering knows about this screen time problem. I wasn't given any workaround to be able to setup screen time limits on my child's ipad using my (organizer) ipad. So disappointing,

It's mysteriously been fixed for me... for now. I did nothing, so something has been applied and had a result - how long this lasts I don't know, but it's a welcome start.

There does appear to be an issue with summing up actual times spent on certain activities, but that's just motivation for my Kids to think that they're smarter than Apple when it comes to basic Arithmetic...

Now comes the Parental Draconian restrictions of really clamping down on Gameplay. Kids are easily Addicted, but unlike more restrained Adults, don't recognize this as being a problem... until it has become a shared problem. Thanks to the 7 month period of lack of control, I now have to try and reduce their interest in Gaming, (which gives rise to big mood swings) and switch focus upon other things - predominantly Study for passing forthcoming exams. This one is going to be a hard task.

Perhaps we should start a separate thread for parents trying to rehabilitate their Kids.... now that, surely would be a bit of an embarrassment for Apple, and maybe act as a wake up call to Apple upon how to prioritize "minor" bugs such as leaks in Group Video chats, to Major issues, that impair the future Education of young kids.

I was finally able to configure my child's ipad downtime from the organizer's ipad and have the settings remain when the child's ipad was connected to wifi. Unfortunately, I don't remember how I fixed the problem.

This thread is almost a year old, and six pages long full of complaints, and Apple still hasn't gotten off their bum to actually fix this new "feature" it touted?

For a year my 8 year old has had unrestricted web access and continues to be able to view and search for any type of content because whenever I enable Screen Time -> Content and Privacy Restrictions, the switch toggles back to OFF.

With all the billions Apple is sitting on, surely they can form a team to investigate and fix this issue?

Hello Apple? We have a dozen of your devices in our home. Please address this issue!

gordonf238 wrote:

Hello Apple? We have a dozen of your devices in our home. Please address this issue!

Apple is not reading here for feedback. If you want them to know your thoughts on the matter, you'll need to contact them directly. You can use the feedback page:

Product Feedback - Apple

Or, you can contact support using the Contact Support link at the top right of every page of these forums.

It doesn’t matter how you co tact Apple over this issue they can’t / won’t fix it. I have the original issue open since December last year - raised under my Apple support contract.... the support team have gone dark on me... says a lot.

Softbank japan sold us the phones under the promise that we’d have control over the kids usage .... they were so wrong, and the store manager has since. Vanished.... to rub salt into the wound Apple reduced the prices dramatically 2 weeks later .... geez !

To make matters even worse, Apple pulled the apps from competitors to this functionality since their apps were using an enterprise certificate... and their apps WORKED ! Draw your own conclusions on that one !!!!

Finally don’t think about trying to sue Apple under your local consumer rights Laws, Apple has that one covered already .

i think my next phone won’t be an Apple branded one.

But as of now , the damage to the relations between our kids and ourselves has already been done , hopefully in the future they won’t buy Apple products for their own kids, and on the business front .., where trust matters .... Apple iCloud - is a rebranded Amazon product , so best just go to Amazon instead for your business needs....

Yes, I’m rapidly becoming very unsatisfied and wary of Apple. Their promise of better security than their competitors was also trashed recently who revealed that safari has long been handing out your private details to certain sites that were coded to look for iPhones .... trust ?

svaardt wrote:

It doesn’t matter how you co tact Apple over this issue they can’t / won’t fix it.

I didn't say anything about asking them to fix it. I made a suggestion on how to provide feedback to Apple.