One of the best features for parents that came with iOS 12 was Screen Time. This helpful tool lets you manage your child’s access to apps, schedule their downtime, and block inappropriate content.
Now with iOS 13 comes an enhancement to Screen Time that lets you manage your child’s contacts for certain times and apps. This is a terrific way to make sure that your little ones are in contact with people you know on their iPhone or iPad.
How to manage your child’s contacts with Screen Time
Open your device and make sure that you’ve updated to iPadOS or iOS 13 on iPhone. Then follow these steps to manage your child’s contacts.
Open Settings and select Screen Time.
Under Family, choose the child’s name.
Tap Always Allowed and enter your Screen Time passcode.
Screen Time in Settings on iPadOS
At the top, you’ll see a new section called Allowed Contacts. In that area, tap Contacts.
Then pick from either Everyone or Specific Contacts for who you would like your child to have access to.
If you choose Specific Contacts in the step above, you can next select those contacts by tapping Add Contacts.
Pick from either Choose From My Contacts or Add New Contact For [child’s name].
Change or complete the contact card and tap Done.
Select contacts in Screen Time for child
Details on managing your child’s contacts with Screen Time
Managing your child’s contacts with Screen Time does not mean that you control their contacts list exactly. Here are a few details on how this works.
The contacts that you allow in Screen Time are those that the child can communicate with during the downtime or after app limits have expired.
The apps that this applies to include Phone, FaceTime, and Messages.
Child’s contacts for downtime described
If you add a new contact in step 7 above, you’ll fill out the contact’s card with the details you want your child to have.
If you choose from your contacts in step 7 above, you can add or remove details from the contact card and those changes will apply only to the contact card for your child.
Contact card changes described
Another way for parents to feel secure
You can’t be careful enough these days as an adult, much less as a child. Giving parents the option to manage the people their children are in contact with on their device, during downtime or after app limits, is a good way to help parents feel more secure about their child’s screen time.
What do you think about this new iOS 13 and iPadOS feature? Are you planning to use it for your child? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Sandy worked for many years in the IT industry as a project manager, department manager, and PMO Lead. She then decided to follow her dream and now writes about technology full-time. Sandy holds a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology.
She loves technology– specifically – terrific games and apps for iOS, software that makes your life easier, and productivity tools that you can use every day, in both work and home environments.
Her articles have regularly been featured at MakeUseOf, iDownloadBlog and many other leading tech publications.
I have been trying for an hour to understand just the contacts feature of screen time for parental control purposes. It is almost entirely nonsensical. I add contacts for my child but they don’t show up on her phone. I can restrict her contacts but only during downtime? The user interface here is just impossible to make sense of.
I blocked messages for contacts only on my childs phone. When my child went to send his friend a message, that is a contact, it said “you can only send messages to your contacts only.” I could see that they had previous conversations too.
Can you please explain this to me?
Is there a way that the number he had down, which I know for a fact is his friend, was really being forwarded or was his friends number duplicated?
I’m trying really hard to understand this. Thank you for any help you can provide
I want to allow my teen to manage her contacts, and choose who to add or delete etc. But she cannot add anyone or change her contacts. Why won’t this work? I have tried everything.
i was setting up screen time on my childs phone, i wanted to make it so they couldnt contact anyone but me during downtime and that they cant edit my contact info. i accidentally made it so my child cannot edit any of their contacts, including the non-downtime contacts. they also cannot add new contacts to their phone. i didnt mean to do this and i cannot figure out how i fix it. can anyone help?
I have a friend with a specific need for Screen Time or something like that. Her aged mother goes through her iPhone contact list and mages to block almost all of her contacts by pressing on “Block This Caller”. This includes her caregiver daughter, who can no longer contact her mom.
Is there a procedure with Screen Time to make it difficult for the mother to stop doing this?
The new feature would be amazing but I can’t get it to work. I put my teens phone in downtime and then added myself as an “always allowed contact” and it didn’t work.
Any suggestions?
I have the same problem. All the other allowed contacts work for my daughter’s phone – were you able to find a solution? I’m not finding anything to help troubleshoot this.
After the most recent update, this feature changed. ALL of the contacts are now disabled during downtime and the time limits I set. I had at least a dozen numbers my child was allowed to contact “after hours” or after app limits expired. Not anymore.
This is a terrible terrible terrible thing. Teens don’t need to be watched and monitored and CONTROLLED, every second of every day.
Nobody needs, nor wants that.
Every parent of 2020, were never tracked as a kid and they had privacy as a teen.
I understand now there are phones some may haven’t have had when they were a teen, but just because they didn’t have one, doesn’t mean they should be able to control us teens of 2020 and give us no privacy because we have technology.
It’s not our fault we have technology and most teens that are being controlled with screen time, Life360, etc, didn’t do anything to deserve it.
Our parents say it’s to “protect us” or because “we need screen time” when that’s simply not true.
These kinds of things should be banned.
Nobody wants to be controlled and teens need privacy and need to learn how to figure things out on their own.
If teens stay up late on their phone and are tired the next day at school, they would’ve learned from that experience and wouldn’t have done it again.
If teens went out late with friends and had fun but got in trouble when they got home, they would’ve learned their lesson but would’ve also got to experience BEING A TEEN.
Screen time is a terrible thing and shouldn’t even be a thing in the first place.
Strict parents make sneaky kids. Most parents want a good relationship with their kids, and if they use screen time or Life360, their just ruining the chance to have a good relationship with them.
I am very happy with the update done for Screen Time. It is almost exactly what I am looking for in protection. The only thing I feel is missing is being able to completely control my child’s contacts. I wish they would tighten the belt on that feature. But overall, I am so happy with what they have done. I no longer have to pay for an app to manage my kids phones.
I have been trying for an hour to understand just the contacts feature of screen time for parental control purposes. It is almost entirely nonsensical. I add contacts for my child but they don’t show up on her phone. I can restrict her contacts but only during downtime? The user interface here is just impossible to make sense of.
I blocked messages for contacts only on my childs phone. When my child went to send his friend a message, that is a contact, it said “you can only send messages to your contacts only.” I could see that they had previous conversations too.
Can you please explain this to me?
Is there a way that the number he had down, which I know for a fact is his friend, was really being forwarded or was his friends number duplicated?
I’m trying really hard to understand this. Thank you for any help you can provide
I want to allow my teen to manage her contacts, and choose who to add or delete etc. But she cannot add anyone or change her contacts. Why won’t this work? I have tried everything.
i was setting up screen time on my childs phone, i wanted to make it so they couldnt contact anyone but me during downtime and that they cant edit my contact info. i accidentally made it so my child cannot edit any of their contacts, including the non-downtime contacts. they also cannot add new contacts to their phone. i didnt mean to do this and i cannot figure out how i fix it. can anyone help?
I have a friend with a specific need for Screen Time or something like that. Her aged mother goes through her iPhone contact list and mages to block almost all of her contacts by pressing on “Block This Caller”. This includes her caregiver daughter, who can no longer contact her mom.
Is there a procedure with Screen Time to make it difficult for the mother to stop doing this?
I don’t want to share my contacts with anyone let alone my teens
Once I enter the passcode, the settings close and I have to start over.
The new feature would be amazing but I can’t get it to work. I put my teens phone in downtime and then added myself as an “always allowed contact” and it didn’t work.
Any suggestions?
I have the same problem. All the other allowed contacts work for my daughter’s phone – were you able to find a solution? I’m not finding anything to help troubleshoot this.
After the most recent update, this feature changed. ALL of the contacts are now disabled during downtime and the time limits I set. I had at least a dozen numbers my child was allowed to contact “after hours” or after app limits expired. Not anymore.
This is a terrible terrible terrible thing. Teens don’t need to be watched and monitored and CONTROLLED, every second of every day.
Nobody needs, nor wants that.
Every parent of 2020, were never tracked as a kid and they had privacy as a teen.
I understand now there are phones some may haven’t have had when they were a teen, but just because they didn’t have one, doesn’t mean they should be able to control us teens of 2020 and give us no privacy because we have technology.
It’s not our fault we have technology and most teens that are being controlled with screen time, Life360, etc, didn’t do anything to deserve it.
Our parents say it’s to “protect us” or because “we need screen time” when that’s simply not true.
These kinds of things should be banned.
Nobody wants to be controlled and teens need privacy and need to learn how to figure things out on their own.
If teens stay up late on their phone and are tired the next day at school, they would’ve learned from that experience and wouldn’t have done it again.
If teens went out late with friends and had fun but got in trouble when they got home, they would’ve learned their lesson but would’ve also got to experience BEING A TEEN.
Screen time is a terrible thing and shouldn’t even be a thing in the first place.
Strict parents make sneaky kids. Most parents want a good relationship with their kids, and if they use screen time or Life360, their just ruining the chance to have a good relationship with them.
Hi Ava,
Thanks for sharing your perspective as an actual teenager who does not think Screen Time is warranted or effective for people in this age range.
We really appreciate hearing this side of the story–from kids, rather than parents of kids.
I am very happy with the update done for Screen Time. It is almost exactly what I am looking for in protection. The only thing I feel is missing is being able to completely control my child’s contacts. I wish they would tighten the belt on that feature. But overall, I am so happy with what they have done. I no longer have to pay for an app to manage my kids phones.