How to Set Up an Android Phone or Tablet for Kids – There has been an increase in the number of kids wanting to have smartphone. This can be alarming to parents as they want to protect their children from accessing adult content. Luckily with these methods you can control how your kids use their smartphones.
Method One on How to Set Up an Android Phone or Tablet for Kids
Use the Google Family Link
Before children can have a Google Account, they have to be a certain age. They must be at least 13 years of age in most countries.
In Spain and South Korea, they must be 14 years or older, or in the Netherlands, they must be 16 and older.
Parents also prevent this by establishing a fictional age account for their children. This method works, but it violated the terms and conditions of Google and could potentially cause the account to be suspended or locked.
Google recently introduced a service called Family Link to solve this issue. It is one of the most powerful surveillance tools for your children.
Family Link helps parents to build and monitor their
pre-teen children’s accounts but it have two main limitations:
- It is available only in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland at the time of writing;
- You and your child will need a phone running Android 7.0 or later (this also supports a very small number of Android 6.1 devices). Family Link works on iOS too.
If you are qualifying on each of those points, the way to go is Family Connection. Parents can use it to track their children’s apps remotely, their online searches, how many hours their devices are used every day, and how to lock the phone at night.
How To Set Up Family Link
To get started with Family Link, do the following:
- Download the Family Link app from the Play Store.
- Click on the first screen
- Next, create a Google account for your child when prompted.
- You will need to verify your payment method during this process. A charge of $ 0.30 will be charged to your credit card, which will be canceled upon confirmation.
- Now you can sign into the account on your child’s phone and also install Family Link.
- Follow the on-screen prompts to finish the setup.
Once you are done, you can use Family Link to:
- Authorize updates, meaning you’ll be prompted to allow or reject any applications your child wants to install.
- Restrict screen time by setting a threshold of daily use in 30-minute increments.
- Set bedtime, during which the telephone ceases working.
- Track the operation of your child’s device with weekly reports and temporarily switch off devices that they use too often.
- Set up child-friendly filters to limit the number of applications, games, and movies they can access and add to safe Chrome searches.
Family Link works only for those under 13. When your child is 13, he will be able to take responsibility for his account.
Method Two on How to Set Up an Android Phone or Tablet for Kids
Replace YouTube with Youtube Kids
Most of the kids have been living on YouTube lately, but there’s a lot of stuff you wouldn’t want them to land on.
You can take the YouTube app out for very young children and replace it with YouTube Kids, an official, family-friendly alternative with the selected content.
Turn YouTube off first by going to Settings > Applications > YouTube, then press Switch off. This will mask the device icon so your child won’t be able to access it.
Enable YouTube Kids instead now.
You can turn search on or off via this app’s settings, restrict the time your kids can watch, and report inappropriate videos that unintentionally slip in.
You can switch the regular YouTube app to restricted mode if your kids are too old for this.
It covers videos that other users mark as having adult or inappropriate content. These too, can be filtered algorithmically.
Open YouTube, and tap the account icon at the top right of the screen to trigger it. Now go to Settings > General and switch to restricted mode