I Just Learned You Can Set iPhones To 'Brick' Mode In 6 Simple(ish) Steps

How to lock down your iPhone for less distraction.So-called ‘brick’ phones are becoming increasingly popular as people wisen up to the addictive nature of smartphones and attempt to keep tweens and teens from accessing and sharing problematic content online.For some time, The Smartphone Free Childhood campaign has been calling on parents to delay giving their kids smartphones until the age of 14 – with 200,000 parents, including a whole host of celebs, now signed up.Parents are either delaying giving phones altogether or offering so-called ‘brick’ or ‘dumb’ phones – pared back devices with very limited functionality. (Basically, a phone that lets you message, make phone calls and that’s about it.)But for parents who have already invested in smartphones for their kids, yet want to rein their usage in a little bit, there are ways to give iPhones the ‘brick’ treatment. Turning an iPhone into a ‘dumb’ phoneAccording to Internet Matters, you can tweak a lot of Apple’s controls and settings to limit the device. The key thing to remember is to restrict access to the phone’s screen time settings with a passcode (more on that in a moment), so your child can’t then override all your hard work. Rightio, let’s get started:1. Get rid of appsFirst up, get rid of most of the apps keeping only the useful and essential ones like Phone, Messages and Maps.You can remove apps by going to the main home screen and holding down on the app you want to delete until it wobbles.Click the – button in the top left hand corner to remove it and select ‘delete app’.Internet Matters advises setting app limits too (basically, how long they can spend on the remaining apps each day). You can do this by going to settings and scroll down to screen time (or search it in the top search box).Go to app limits and set limits to the minimum amount.If you do end up keeping certain social media apps or games, turning off notifications from these can also be helpful to limit distractions throughout the day.Go to settings > notifications and then turn off notifications for each app by clicking onto it manually.2. Set content restrictionsYou can do this fairly easily. Go to settings and screen time then scroll down to content & privacy restrictions, and then enable content & privacy restrictions. Go to ‘iTunes & app store purchases’ and disable ‘installing apps’ and ‘in-app purchases’. Scroll down and set ‘require password’ to ‘always’.There are a whole host of content restrictions you can set in this section so it’s worth taking some time to explore.3. Limit who they’re communicating with – and howGo to settings and screen time then scroll down to communication limits. Here you can limit who your child can communicate with when they’re using their phone (aka during screen time), as well as during downtime. Next, go to communication safety and turn the setting on – this means it will detect nude photos or videos before they’re sent or viewed on your child’s device.4. Lock down their web browsingIf you want to set up browsing restrictions so your child doesn’t have unfettered access to the web, Internet Matters recommends installing child-safe browsers like Kiddle or Kidslox that filter content.You can also disable Safari (iPhone’s default internet browser) by going into screen time > content & privacy restrictions > allowed apps & features and then deselecting Safari, as well as any other apps you would like to remove access to.5. Lock your screen time settings inOnce you’ve made all of these changes in screen time, scroll down to where it says lock screen time settings and put a passcode lock on it so your child can’t reset them. 6. Sort out location servicesLastly, if you want to stop your child’s phone from being tracked by various apps, go to settings > privacy > location services and then disable location services for most apps. You might want to keep it on for services like maps, however, and Internet Matters also advises: “Consider using Find My to keep track of your child’s location for safety.”Related...I Track My Teens' Phones And Discovered Something Unexpected About MyselfThe 4 Best Ways To Stretch Out Your Phone's Battery Life When It's About To DieI'm A Child Therapist – Here's Why Taking Away Their Phone To Punish Them Won't Work