Parven’s Digital Parenting Rundown for October 2026 covers the latest online safety news for parents. The rest of this post walks through parental controls on iPhone, step by step.
Short answer: Give your child their own Child Account, then open Settings, tap Family and tap your child’s name. From there, four settings do most of the work: approving every new app, approving every new website, approving every new contact, and a schedule that switches the phone off at night. What these settings cannot do is show you what happens inside the apps your child already has, and that is where most of the difficult things happen.
In short:
- Every parental control on iPhone now lives in one place: Settings, then Family, then your child’s name.
- Four settings do most of the work: Ask to Buy, Ask to Browse, Allowed Contacts and Screen Time Schedule.
- Allowed Contacts is the one most parents skip, and it matters most, because it stops strangers reaching your child.
- No setting shows you what happens inside an app you have already approved.
- A child who knows they will not lose the phone for telling you something is safer than any setting.
Why parental controls on iPhone matter at age 11
Ofcom’s 2026 report on children and parents found that 56% of 10-year-olds in the UK own a mobile phone. At 11, that jumps to 83%. Nearly all of those phones are smartphones. The same report found that just over a third of parents (35%) say they use parental controls.
So most children get a phone around the move to secondary school, and most parents say they do not use parental controls. The full Ofcom report on children’s media use has the detail.
What changed with iOS 27
Apple rebuilt its parental controls with iOS 27, its latest iPhone software. The changes that matter:
- Everything now sits in one menu. You manage your child’s phone from your own iPhone: Settings, then Family, then your child’s name.
- Some settings are now switched on by default. For children under 13, Apple turns on Ask to Buy and Ask to Browse automatically. For everyone under 18, it turns on Limit Adult Websites and Communication Safety.
- Every phone in the family needs the update. The new controls only appear once every device in your Family Sharing group runs iOS 27. If one phone cannot update, the older Screen Time menu still works.
Apple keeps its own step-by-step guide to parental controls up to date, and it is worth bookmarking. This post covers what Apple’s guide leaves out: which settings are worth your evening, and what none of them reach.
Before you start, check two things. Your child needs their own Child Account, not a shared one. And your own name needs to be in your child’s contacts, because that is where their requests for permission get sent.
The four parental controls on iPhone that do most of the work
| Setting | Where to find it | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Ask to Buy | Apps & Websites, then Restrictions, then Ask to Buy | Your child asks before downloading any app or buying anything, and you approve it from your phone |
| Ask to Browse | Apps & Websites, then Restrictions, then Filtering | Your child asks before opening any new website, and you approve it from your phone |
| Allowed Contacts | Allowed Contacts, then Manage Contacts | Your child asks before adding anyone new, and nobody new can message, call or FaceTime them until you say yes |
| Screen Time Schedule | Screen Time Schedule, then Add Schedule | The phone limits apps at set times, such as school hours and bedtime, on its own |
Ask to Buy. When your child wants a new app, a request arrives on your phone. You see what the app is and decide. Nothing new appears on their phone without you knowing about it, and it ends most arguments about in-app purchases. To switch it on, tap Apps & Websites, then Restrictions, then Ask to Buy, and turn on Require Purchase Approval.
Ask to Browse. Your child asks before opening a new website, and you approve it from your own phone. A filter tries to guess which websites are unsuitable and always misses some. Ask to Browse works the other way round: your child only sees websites you have said yes to. You can also add websites ahead of time, such as the ones school uses. To switch it on, go to Filtering and choose Approved Websites Only.
Allowed Contacts. You choose who is in your child’s contacts. If someone new messages them, your child cannot read the message until you approve that person. This is the setting most parents never switch on, and it matters most. Grooming and sextortion both start with a stranger being able to message a child, and this setting stops that first message.
To set it up, tap Allowed Contacts, turn on Manage Contacts and pick the people you approve. Leave Allow Contact Editing switched off. While it is off, your child has to send you a request to add anyone new.
Screen Time Schedule. This replaced Downtime. You choose which apps work at which times of day, with different routines for school days and weekends. The phone enforces bedtime, so you do not have to. You can also pause the phone instantly from your own iPhone, for example at dinner.
Apple also offers Time Allowances, which set a daily total for categories such as games and social media. They are useful, but less important than the four settings above.
Communication Safety: Apple’s warning for nude images
Communication Safety blurs photos and videos that show nudity when your child receives them, or when they try to send them. It then shows a warning, explains why, and offers a way to contact a trusted adult. It works in Messages, AirDrop, FaceTime video messages and shared photo albums. According to Apple’s Communication Safety page, the phone does the checking itself, so Apple never sees the photos.
Apple switches it on by default for children under 18. Children under 13 cannot view a blurred image unless a parent enters the Screen Time passcode. With iOS 27, it now also blurs gore and violence in FaceTime video messages.
Parven explains what Apple’s crackdown on nude images means for families in this video:
To check it is on, open Settings, tap Family, tap your child’s name, then tap Communication Safety.
The settings parents usually miss
Three worth a look once the basics are done.
Who your child can contact during Screen Time. Under Allowed Contacts, the During Screen Time setting decides who can reach your child. Choose Contacts Only. The other options, Contacts & Groups and Everyone, let in people you have never approved.
Messages inside games. Game Center, Apple’s own gaming service, has its own Private Messaging setting. You find it under Apps & Websites, then Restrictions, then Game Center. Set it to Blocked unless you have a reason not to.
Your Screen Time passcode. If your child knows your phone’s passcode and you use the same digits for Screen Time, they can change every setting in this post. Choose a different passcode.
What parental controls on iPhone cannot do
This part explains why you can set everything up correctly and still feel uneasy.
They do not see inside apps you have approved. If your child has WhatsApp, no setting shows you the group chat with thirty children in it. If they play Roblox, no setting tells you who talks to them inside a game. Parental controls on iPhone decide what gets onto the phone. They do not watch what happens once it is there.
They only cover your child’s phone. Your settings do nothing on a friend’s phone at a sleepover, a school laptop or a games console in someone else’s house.
Some teenagers find ways round them. Ofcom’s 2026 report found that 16% of 13 to 17 year olds say they know how to get round parental controls and age checks, and 5% say they did it in the last year. That is a minority, but the same report describes a girl whose parents set up several controls, and who still found ways round them.
They tell you nothing about how your child feels. A phone with every setting switched on still cannot tell you that the other children leave your child out of the group chat every evening.
So parental controls on iPhone are worth setting up. They keep out the obvious dangers and give you time. They do not replace knowing what is going on in your child’s life, online and off.
What to do alongside the settings
Three things matter more than any setting.
Charge phones in the kitchen overnight. When phones charge outside the bedroom, nobody is on them in the late-night hours. Make it a rule for the whole house, adults included, so it does not feel like a punishment for one child.
Ask to see the group chats, not just the apps. Parents tend to check which apps are on the phone. The trouble usually happens inside a group chat, so ask your child to show you the chats as well.
Tell your child they will not lose the phone for telling you. Say it plainly: if anything happens on this phone that frightens or upsets you, come and tell us, and you will not lose the phone. Children who expect to lose the phone deal with frightening things alone, and no setting changes that.
Kids n Clicks covers more of this in our post on a smartphone free childhood and our post on positive screen time. Our post on sextortion shows most clearly why that last point matters so much.
For help keeping up with the apps and trends your child is actually using, Kids n Clicks publishes free resources for parents and runs the Kids n Clicks app.
Parven Kaur is a digital parenting and online safety expert, and the founder of Kids n Clicks. She won the Scottish Cyber Security Award, and she sits on the National Board of Advisors for Barnardo’s Scotland.
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