Kids have already figured out ways to bypass Screen Time on iOS devices

That didn’t take long. Just days after iOS 12 was released to the public, kids have figured out how to bypass Apple’s Screen Time feature. Many of these workarounds, first discovered by the British press, are now being posted online, according to Business Insider. 

Screen Time, which was announced alongside the rest of iOS 12 in June, allows users to monitor and restrict their device usage. Parents using a family iCloud account can also limit device access to minors using the same tool.

Over at Reddit, there’s currently an active discussion going on about how kids are bypassing Screen Time restrictions.

One parent noted:

When iOS 12 came out I limited my 7-year old son’s screen time through the family share. For a few days I felt like he was playing a bit more than he should, but I couldn’t figure out why.

Finally today, my son revealed his hack: When he runs out of screen time and his games get locked, he heads to App Store, downloads a previously installed (but later removed) game through the cloud icon, and it works without limitations!

Another parent, this time on Apple’s support forum, noted his son quickly found a way around Screen Time:

I was so excited to turn on the screen time restrictions in the new iOS. Until my 13 year old found a work around within 2 minutes of handing his phone back to him during ‘down time’ — he went to settings and changed the date/time of his phone to an unrestricted time and voila! Free screentime again.

As the parent of an 11-year-old daughter, I’m not surprised Screen Time workarounds have already been discovered. Luckily, even with these workarounds, parents can still see what their kids are doing and use this information to improve the situation.

No doubt, future versions of Screen Time will remove some of these workarounds and then new ones will be discovered.

Someone else on Reddit said: “Damn these kids are getting smarter and smarter.” Yes, they are.