Parenting in today’s digital landscape is an uphill battle, but tech companies making moves to help. Recently, Apple announced several new updates to help protect teens and younger kids online, including new communication settings, new ways to manage child accounts, and blurring nudity.
On June 11, Apple revealed a slew of new measures to keep minors safe when using their devices. These will all be included in Apple’s new software update for iPhones, the iOS 26 released sometimes this fall (and iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, visionOS 26, and tvOS 26 for other devices).
“These new tools build on the parental controls already available in Screen Time and on the App Store, and are designed to help parents navigate the risks of an increasingly complex digital world,” Apple said in a statement.
Streamlined Child Accounts
Apple has already had Child Accounts, which must be associated with a parent or guardian account in a Family Sharing group. These are required for children under 13 and can be used for teens up to 18. But if you’ve ever tried to set up a Child Account on a kid’s phone or iPad, then you know how complicated the entire process is. With Apple’s upcoming update, the company has streamlined the process and made it easier to set up the account and access the built-in parental controls it offers.
When using apps, parents can decide to share their child’s age range, which does not include the child’s real birth date. This will help app developers provide age-appropriate content, while protecting the child’s sensitive information.
Teen Protections
Teens specifically will get more protections from Apple’s new update. Everyone aged 13 to 17 will automatically have age-appropriate protections enabled, even if their account was originally set up as a standard Apple Account and not a Child Account. These include Communication Limits, which gives parents the authority to manage when and who their kids can communicate with via Phone, FaceTime, Messages, and iCloud contacts. Teens and kids must send requests to their parents for approval when they want to communicate with new phone numbers.
Credit: Apple
Credit: Apple
Once app developers update their technology, kids and teens will also have to send requests with parents to chat, follow, or friend users in third-party apps. This will allow parents to know who their kids are talking to and protect them from communicating with anyone they don’t feel comfortable with.
There are additional expanded features that’ll help protect teens. For example, if parents have age restrictions on their child’s phones, the App Store will remove apps that exceed age ratings limit, so they aren’t in view. They can also grant an exception to download an app with a higher age rating with the Ask to Buy feature enabled, and they can revoke that permission at any time using Screen Time on iPhones and iPad.
Additionally, the Communication Safety setting will intervene if it detects any nudity in FaceTime video calls. It will also blur our nudity in Shared Albums in photos. Learn more about all of Apple’s family settings HERE.
More Facts About Kids & Phones
Some parents choose to forego smartphones in favor of watches or desktop computers (or flip phones). A Gen Z Harvard student even started an Appstinence movement to help people slowly break their addictions to their phones and shift to a completely smartphone-free life. Other parents allow their kids to have phones, but they still worry about what they are looking at.
A March 2025 Common Sense Media Report found that by the times kids are 2 years old, 40 percent of them have their own tablet; by age 4, the percentage goes up to 58 percent. By age 8, nearly 1 in 4 children have their own cell phone.
Most parents surveyed in the report (75 to 80 percent) were concerned about screen media, excessive use, potential effects on mental health, and how much inappropriate content their child could stumble upon.
These Apple setting can give parents more peace of mind as they navigate phone rules for their family.
Before you go, check out these celebrities who have shared their technology rules for their kids.
