Apple Store in Birmingham helps protect children online on Safer Internet day
Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe every February
Last updated 7th Feb 2023
Over a quarter of parents say they'd feel more at ease with their child using the internet if they had a better understanding of how to keep them safe - particularly on social media. This new research comes as today marks Safer Internet Day.
It continues a common theme among parents, who are often found to have concerns over keeping up with the latest online trends or how to best use new technology in order to keep their children safe.
And US tech giant Apple is also offering free classes to parents through its Today at Apple workshops, which run in Apple Stores and online, offering guidance on how to protect children using the safety features on their iPhone or iPad.
The Apple Store in Birmingham held a workshop today (7th) to show their safety features to families across the region.
Erik Neuenschwander, Apple’s director of User Privacy, said: “At Apple, our goal is to provide people with technology that not only improves and enriches their lives, but also helps them stay safe online.
“We’re proud to be an official supporter of Safer Internet Day in Europe — and we’ll keep innovating every day to empower people to protect their families online.”
Will Gardner, the UK Safer Internet Centre’s director said: "Safer Internet Day provides the best opportunity in the year to promote safe and responsible use of technology.
“The success of the day lies in the huge collaboration that takes place, with thousands of organisations getting involved to promote key messages and provide information and resources."
This is Apple's top tips to keep children safe online:
- Keep track on your family’s app usage and set limits and exceptions. Screen Time gives you a better understanding of the time you and your kids spend using apps, visiting websites and on your devices overall. You can get weekly reports or see specific app usage, notifications and device pickups.
- Use downtime to set a specific time, like bedtime, when apps and notifications are blocked or off limits.
- Choose which apps they can use. You can prevent your kids from installing new apps, like social media or photo sharing — or even turn off the Safari web browser.
- Easily create app limits. With Combined Limits, you can combine individual apps and websites, and even whole categories, into a single, easy-to-manage limit.
- Decide who can talk to them. Communication Limits let you choose who your children can communicate with throughout the day and during downtime, so you can make sure they’re always reachable.
- Keep them safe on the internet. You can set up your kids’ devices to limit adult content or only open websites you select. You can also install special web browsers that are designed to display kid-friendly content and nothing else.
- Make sure what they see is appropriate. With a few taps, you can keep your kids from accessing movies, TV shows, music, music videos, apps, books or podcasts that contain things you don’t want them to see or hear.
- Help protect kids from what they see and send. You can set up kids’ devices to show warnings when receiving or sending images containing nudity. The image is blurred, and your child gets an alert along with helpful resources and the option to message someone they trust for help.
- Manage in-app purchases. Many apps, even free apps, allow (or encourage) purchases within the app itself. A setting in Content & Privacy Restrictions lets you block all in-app purchases automatically.