A Kid's Account: Limits and App-Install Approval

A family usually handles the first phone retroactively: the kid downloads whatever they want, plays until late, and the parent then tries to introduce rules on a train that's already left the station — a guaranteed conflict. Yet both platforms have a full-featured, free kid mode: the child gets their own account, the parent approves installs, sets daily limits, and a bedtime cutoff. The key is turning it on day one, while the rules are still just part of the phone, not "confiscation."

How to do it

Android (Google Family Link):

1. Install the Family Link app on your own phone and create a Google kid's account for your child (or link an existing one).
2. When setting up the child's phone, the account links to yours. In the app you then set: install approval (every app from the Play Store waits for your consent), a daily screen-time limit, a bedtime (when the phone locks), and optionally limits for individual apps.
3. Family Link also shows an overview of how much time your child spends in which app — good material for a conversation, not an interrogation.

iPhone (Screen Time):

1. Add your child to Family Sharing (Settings → your name → Family Sharing).
2. In Settings → Screen Time, select your child and set Downtime (bedtime), App Limits, and Content & Privacy Restrictions.
3. Turn on Ask to Buy — every app download, even free ones, comes to you for approval.

One principle: set limits together with your child and explain why. A mode the child experiences as fair rules of the game works; one experienced as surveillance just leads to finding ways around it.

A typical scenario

An eight-year-old gets his first phone. The parents set it up with Family Link the first evening: an hour a day, bedtime at 7:30pm, installs pending approval. A week later, the first request comes in — a game classmates are playing. Dad checks the age rating, approves it, and asks about it at dinner. No battle happened, because the rules existed before the phone did — and the app request became an opening for conversation instead of a secret download.

What you get out of it

The evening arguments about when the phone goes dark disappear — it goes dark on its own, and the parent stops playing cop. You know what your child is installing before they do it. And the child learns to handle limits from the start, which is easier than introducing them at twelve. The broader context is covered in the chapter Digital hygiene for the family; for adults' own self-control, there's the tip App limits.

Pro tip

Limits don't have to be set in stone. Family Link and Screen Time both let you add time remotely — your child sends a request and you approve it from your own phone, say when it's raining on a Sunday and a game in progress has half an hour left. A rule with an exception you can politely ask for raises better than a rule that's worth sneaking around.