iPad Lockdowns For A Family Service Agency

Apple Device
Written By A Cyber Adult
 
 

We worked with an independently managed and owned organization that specializes in providing essential services to neurodiverse children and their families. Their core goals were simple:

 
 
 

Understanding their needs to ensure guaranteed results moving forward.

 

The children who receive services at this organization certainly know their way around a tablet or smartphone. The organization provides iPads for the children to utilize as tools in various learning settings. Some of the biggest issues that needed to be addressed were:

  • Children searching up inappropriate content online.

  • Children using the built in iMessage & FaceTime apps to reach out to people saved within the cloud saved Contacts.

  • Children taking photos and videos of things and other people in the centre without permission.

  • Having access to the app store and downloading apps they shouldn’t.

  • Purposely deleting apps for the fun of it.

Note: All of these issues needed to be addressed on only specified devices as other business devices using the same Apple ID account needed full access to content and features.

 
 

Finding the appropriate and best solution.

 

  • All of these restrictions were set directly onto each iPad under: Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions

    After ensuring that all the appropriate apps and games had been installed, we toggled on the “Don’t Allow” feature within these settings for key features including:

    • Installing Apps

    • Deleting Apps

    • In-app Purchases

    • Passcode & Face ID Changes

    • Account Changes

    By doing this, no child is able to make changes to the apps or account on the device. We took things a step further by disabling, hiding, or passcode locking the following apps:

    • Safari

    • FaceTime

    • Camera

    • Photos (Locked)

    • AirDrop

    • SharePlay

    • All Apple Intelligence & Siri

    • iMessage (Locked)

    • Phone (Locked)

    • Assorted Apps (Hidden)

    By doing this, no child is able to access these apps without an adult present to either re-enable them or unlock/unhide them.

    We completed some other restrictions that were relevant for this particular organization such as not allowing contact editing and game centre changes.

  • All of the device usage features enabled were set directly onto each iPad under: Settings > Screen Time and then any one of the following paths:

    • > Downtime

    • > App Limits

    • > Always Allowed

    • > Screen Distance

    • > Communication Limits

    • > Communication Safety

    Each usage limit path allowed us to control different things, such as:

    • What hours of the day the iPad would be completely blocked/unusable.

    • How many hours a particular app could be used a day.

    • Any apps that could bypass downtime limitations.

    • How close a child could hold the iPad to their eyes.

    • The inability to add or delete contacts.

    • Further communication safety.

    We then also ensured that each device was successfully seen within the FindMy app. This helped the organization recover any Apple device that went missing (and some actually did and were recovered successfully).

    By placing all these additional limitations onto each iPad, it was an added layer of safety and promotion of healthy device usage for the children at this organization.

 

Device Lockdown Score 9/10

A Cyber Adult