How Can You Limit Who Can Call, Message, and Confrontation on iPhone?

Are your kids spending more time on your iPhone than they should? With Apple’s updated Screen Time in iOS 13, you can take advantage of improved parental controls to set limits on who kids can call, text, and talk to in person.

We’ll show you how new and improved features can help you scale your kids’ smartphone habits so they don’t call, text, or Face Timing people they shouldn’t be calling, texting, or communicating with.

What’s New in Apple’s Screen Time Update

In iOS 13, Apple added some new and improved features to Screen Time that can help parents rescale their kids’ iPhone addiction.

This is one of the ways parents can help their kids develop healthy device habits rather than sticking to the smartphone. Parents can now see how often their children use the phone, where they spend the most time and the apps they use most often.

They can also set different options to limit time spent on certain apps or block them altogether, and they can also limit who kids can call, text or Face Time. This is made possible by a combination of websites as well as specific apps and app categories.

The new controls allow parents to impose different restrictions on messaging and calling during the hours their children are off and the hours of screen time allowed. It is also possible to see the time your children spend in front of the screen as weekly reports with graphs comparing weekly usage.

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How Does the Enhanced Screen Time System on iPhone Work?

New features introduced in iOS 13 aim to empower parents over who their kids can communicate with on iPhone or iPad.

The controls can be found in iPhone Settings under the Communication Limits section in Screen Time. When this setting is enabled, unknown persons cannot reach children during their allowed screen time, so only those in your contacts can contact you or your children.

During the downtime, you can choose whether designated contacts or someone else can reach you or your children on your iPhone. This means you can choose specific contacts your child can call or text; for example, only father or mother.

Controls that schedule Downtime to run (day or night) help parents prevent their kids from texting or calling friends late at night or on school days. At such times, only certain apps and calls can be used or bypassed.

Parents can also remotely manage their kids’ iCloud contacts so they can easily share important numbers with them while keeping their contact list under control.

The Screen Time system included with iOS 12 also allows iPhone users to set time limits on apps, schedule time from their screen, view activity reports and usage, among other things.

How to Set Limits on Who Can Call, Message, or Confront Children

If you haven’t set up Screen Time for your iPhone or your child’s iPhone, here’s how to do it before you set communication limits.

Stage 1: Set up Family Sharing. It’s a useful feature that allows up to six people to share Apple Music, iCloud storage, location data, apps, and iTunes purchases, among other things. Go to Settings>Set Up Family Sharing.

Step 2: Tap Get started and choose a category you want to share, then follow the onscreen instructions until you reach Invite Family Members.

Stage 3: If there are members with Apple IDs who don’t need parental controls during setup, add them to your list. Tap Family Sharing again and you’re ready.

Step 4: Next, go to Settings>Screen Time and set your child’s account as “Child’s account”. and tapping your child’s name. Tap Turn on Screen Time and follow the onscreen instructions to set App Limits, Downtime, and Content & Privacy, among other settings.

Step 5: Then tap on Communication Limits. Here you can limit who can call, text and FaceTime, as well as manage their contacts.

Step 6: Tap each of these sections to set rules for Allowed Screen Time and Downtime. Under ‘During Allowed Screen Time’ you can set the communication to Contacts Only or Everyone. In the Downtime section there is an option to allow communication with Specific People, which you must add via the Contacts editor or browser, so it is more restrictive.

If you want granular control of your kids’ contacts, tap the button next to Manage Contacts (child’s name). Confirm the request by tapping Confirm on your child’s device and you’re ready.

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Protect Children from Harm

Kids are explorers, so naturally they’ll want to know what else they don’t know yet on your iPhone. Using the new and improved Screen Time parental controls, you can limit who they can communicate with for their safety and peace of mind.

Next: Need to limit what your kids can watch on YouTube? Check out our next article on how to enable Restricted Mode to browse potentially adult content you don’t want them to see while using your phone.