Building Healthy Digital Habits: A Guide for Families
From the American Academy of Pediatrics and Apple
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Family Media Plan helps families talk through and create healthy digital habits that balance screen time with sleep, exercise, schoolwork, and time with friends and family. This guide shows how you can use Apple devices and features as you put AAP guidance into practice.*
Explore guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)
Step 1: Start a conversation about screen time
Parental controls often work best when children understand why they’re in place. Starting with a conversation about screen time before changing any settings helps children feel included in the plan and can create space for continuing conversations that support your child as they grow.
Step 2: Set up a Child Account
When you set up an Apple Account for your child with Family Sharing, it enables age-based safeguards and gives you access to parental controls to manage your child’s experience. It also keeps your personal information separate from your child.
Step 3: Set safety settings for websites and apps
As your child discovers new apps, games, and websites, you can decide what they’re able to access—which apps they can buy or download, which websites they can visit, and which ratings are allowed for content like books and movies.
Set safety settings for websites and apps on your child’s device
Step 4: Make a schedule for device use
Setting a schedule for your child’s device use helps your child balance time online with sleep, physical activity, and time with family and friends. You can use Screen Time to help set routines and manage the time your child spends on their Apple device.
Step 5: Manage your child’s contacts
You can choose who your child can communicate with in Phone, FaceTime, and Messages, and approve new contacts. You can also use Communication Safety to help protect them from viewing or sharing detected nudity and gore in images and videos.
Step 6: Keep the conversation going as your child grows
Parental controls can support open, ongoing conversations between you and your child. Check in regularly and adjust your family’s plan as your child grows.