Apple Lists Parental Tools within New ‘Families’ Webpage

The issue of electric product addiction has aroused increasing attention in the public of America. Apple, one of the largest cellphone manufacturers in the U.S. Market, and other tech giants are urged to do more about smartphone addiction among children. On last Thursday Apple published a new ‘Families‘ web page to detail all its parental control tools and information for its devices including iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The ‘Families’ webpage is divided into several sections, providing a bunch of links to useful resources, like support documents detailing parental controls and other safety features. Parents are able to block all in-app purchases for their kids, set up which apps their children can use, limit what websites children can access, keep track of kids’ locations, set up group chat in Messages, and more. Meanwhile, family members can share apps, movies, music, books, calendars and iCloud storage with each other.

In this page Apple also recommends several health features such as Do Not Disturb While Driving, Bedtime, Medical ID, Night Shift, and Emergency SOS.

“We have reviewed the evidence and we believe there is a clear need for Apple to offer parents more choices and tools to help them ensure that young consumers are using your products in an optimal manner,” reads an excerpt from an open letter to Apple penned by two prominent Silicon Valley investors, Jana Partners and the California State Teachers Retirement System.

“By doing so, we believe Apple would once again be playing a pioneering role, this time by setting an example about the obligations of tech companies to their youngest customers,” continues the letter, aptly titled “Think Differently About Your Kids.”

As a response to this letter, the company promises to continually design new features to help make sure kids use its devices in the ways parents want. A new Digital Healthy tool may debut along with the release of iOS 12 in the upcoming WWDC 2018, to help parents know how much time their kids have spent using iOS devices.

“We have new features and enhancements planned for the future, to add functionality and make these (parental control) tools even more robust,” said Apple in this January.