Power to the Parents

There are times when I’m acutely aware that my control over my little kingdom is merely an illusion. So when something comes along that gives me true power over my little people I get a little excited. And I’m absolutely excited about the new restrictions feature in the iPhone OS 3. The good people at Apple have given moms the power to shut down certain content on their iPhones and it feels so good!

To play around with the restrictions tap your “Settings” button and then tap “General”. Now tap “Restrictions”, it should be towards the bottom of your screen. The first time you visit this section you’ll be asked to enter and re-enter a passcode. You’ll need to enter the passcode every time you monkey around with the restrictions. Now for the power. You, my fellow moms, can allow (or not allow) Safari, You Tube, iTunes, the App Store, the camera or the location feature on your iPhone. Just slide the button next to each of these from on to off and they will literally disappear from your iPhone screens. I got rid of You Tube and iTunes. I know I’ll hear from my kids when they try to watch the silly video of the cat fighting with the copy machine but such is life.

Farther down on the screen you can set what type of content you allow. I tapped “Music & Podcasts” and turned off the explicit ones. They will not show up on my phone. You can set ratings for movies, TV shows and apps. Once you’ve set a rating anything that’s rated higher than that won’t show up on your iPhone. No worries though, you don’t have to download all your movies again. Just change the rating and they’ll be right back where they were before. A note- videos that you’ve converted yourself aren’t subject to the ratings restrictions. It appears to only work on content you’ve downloaded from iTunes.

No illusion of power here, iPhone moms have got it now.