Keeping tabs and controlling the time we spend on our smartphones and devices is very important, but it’s even more important for children. Apple’s Screen Time is great for that… but it’s not working right now. Thankfully, Apple is working on a fix.
It’s important to keep children from using smartphones and other devices with displays for too long. It can impact their brains and eyes differently from ours, especially if they’re smaller children — overuse of screens can strain their eyes. It’s important, then, to restrict how much time they spend using devices, and Screen Time, more specifically the Downtime feature, is one of many tools that can help in that regard by restricting the amount of time children use Apple devices. That is, at least, as long as it’s working properly, and right now it doesn’t seem to be.
Parents using this feature have noticed that the settings don’t seem to be applying correctly, and seem to be reverting to older settings or being removed altogether. It’s definitely not kids manually changing the settings to get more screen time, either, as one user reported that he changed the passcode just in case his children guessed it, and for some reason the settings still reverted it. Most of the time, the issue can go unnoticed since most children won’t report to their parents that they magically got more screen time.
Apple seemingly knew about the issue beforehand, and it issued a fix with iOS 16.5. Yet, the issue was still being reported in subsequent versions. It’s not clear when Apple might release a full solution for the problem, but in the meantime, it has spoken out and promised that it’s aware of the situation. In a statement to the WSJ, an Apple spokesperson said that “we are aware that some users may be experiencing an issue where Screen Time settings are unexpectedly reset,” and that “we take these reports very seriously and we have been, and will continue, making updates to improve the situation.”
If you’re being affected by this issue, you should get a fix sometime soon.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Via: Engadget