Porn is pervasive and can be freely viewed either on purpose or by accident with just one click. While it, sadly, might be foolish to believe that we can sanitize the Internet and completely prevent our kids or teens from viewing pornographic content, as parents, we need to do everything we can to protect the innocence of our kids and have an accountability relationship with them. You can read more about the importance of accountability from a biblical perspective (both as kids and adults) in this article I wrote.
But porn isn't just a kid problem. There are many adults who also want to safeguard their own iPhones or iPads to ensure that they don't have easy access to pornography. Even if you don't have a problem viewing pornography, it makes good sense to remove the temptation and make it difficult to access. It used to be that this kind of thing was really difficult to do if you had an iPad or iPhone because there were no accountablity apps (apps that share your online usage with a trusted individual) available on the Apple App Store and the safe browsers that were available were nowhere near as good as the built in Safari browser.
Thankfully, Apple's new Screen Time function (originally introduced on iOS 7 as "Restrictions") does an amazing job at restricting inappropriate content. Follow the below steps to set up your Apple Device with Screen Time.
STEP 1: FIND AN ACCOUNTABLITY PARTNER
To set up Screen Time on your Apple Device, you need to choose an accountability partner to set up a Screen Time Passcode on your device. This is a pretty important step, because if you know the Screen Time Passcode, you can easily disable it. The Screen Time Passcode is a completely different passcode than the screen lock you use on your device, so it won't affect how you access your device.
Choosing an accountability partner is as easy as approaching a friend (or spouse) and telling them that you've made a commitment to be accountable for all of your online viewing and asking if they would set up your Screen Time Passcode and to store it in a safe place in case you ever need to access it. I've had Screen Time set up for over 5 years now (my wife has the passcode) and it works really well. There is the odd time when it restricts access to a webpage that doesn't contain inappropriate content (for example, I've found that it sometimes restricts pages when shopping for kids clothing online or when viewing blog posts about teens and youth ministry), but this doesn't happen very often and you won't find that your device is on constant lockdown.
STEP 2: SET UP SCREEN TIME
With your accountability partner close by, go to Settings > Screen Time on your Apple device.
Here, under "Content and Privacy Restrictions" you should set up your device to "Block Inappropriate Content". If you have kids/teens, you can also prevent movies, tv shows, or apps with specific ratings from being used/downloaded. For an adult, I would suggest restricting apps rated 17+, but even if you try downloading and using another browser, Screen Time will still block inappropriate content.
Have your accountability partner input a new Screen Time Passcode. If you already have a Screen Time Passcode you can select "Change Screen Time Passcode" and have your accountability partner input a new one that you don't know. Once that's done, your device is now set up to block inappropriate content.
Obviously, this won't make access to inappropriate content impossible. You might also want to have an accountability partner set up the restrictions and passwords for your Youtube and Netflix apps and think twice before allowing your teen to use a social media app like Tik Tok, but Screen Time is an excellent and effective start to help you (and your kids) honour God (and others) with your online viewing habits.
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