Getting started with family mobile devices

First, some general advice

• Almost all services you use have family accounts. This includes Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube Premium (worth it just to remove ads), Spotify, Apple Music, etc. I highly recommend using this feature whenever possible. In most cases, and depending on the service, it requires that each person have their own account. In some cases, it’s as simple as adding a profile and in other cases each person will need their own login, which requires an email address.
• Having a household with Google (Android) and Apple (iOS) phones is going to make things difficult. In some cases, it will make things impossible. Pick one.
• Please please please use a password manager. It will help you and your family members use secure passwords and will ensure that should something happen to one or both of you, someone can get into your stuff. 1Password is great and probably the easiest. I’ve been using it for decades at this point and recommend it to everyone. You definitely don’t need to be technical to use it and whatever effort you need to put in will pale in comparison to the time you will spend if you’re hacked or your identity is stolen.

Simple advice for families with Apple devices

Before I get to the advice, I feel like it’s necessary to acknowledge that Apple doesn’t provide a great solution for families with separated or divorced spouses/partners. If the former or soon-to-be-former spouses/partners don’t get along (or worse), what I’m about to advise probably won’t work well and I have yet to see a great solution in those cases. Happy to talk more about this one-to-one.

Also, my advice assumes your kid has their own iPad or iPhone that is separate from your device(s).

In an attempt to make my advice as accessible as possible for the widest audience, I’m going to skip over a lot of details and keep things as simple as possible. If you have questions, drop me an email or text.

Having said all that…

First and foremost, make sure that every member of your family/household has their own Apple ID. Do not share Apple IDs. If you’re creating an adult account, use these instructions. If you’re creating a child account, use these instructions. It kinda blows my mind when I see it, but kids should not be signed into grown-up accounts on their devices for a whole bunch of reasons.

If for some reason you set up your child with an adult Apple ID, you will need to update the birth date associated with their Apple ID, which will change their account into a child account.

Once everyone has their own Apple ID, you will want to set up Family Sharing. When you set up family sharing, it will only allow for one adult to be the organizer. Can you guess who that is in our family?

At this point, you can set up parental controls on your kid’s iPhone and/or iPad. You can control the content your kids have access to, you can control the apps they install, you can set limits on some apps and not others, you can give your kids a certain amount of time on their entire device on weekdays that differs from what they can do on weekends. It’s very thoughtful and easy to control.

Some caveats and recommendations

• When you set up an Apple ID for a child, it comes with some restrictions and once you come up against those restrictions you might curse me. This will inevitably come up when you or your kid tries to sign up for a gaming account of some kind. While it creates some complexity and kinda sorta goes against some advice I just gave you, you can create Google (Gmail) accounts that are not child accounts for when you need to get around age restrictions for kids under 13. I’d wait until you hit the pain point before doing this.
• You don’t have to create an iCloud email address when you set up an Apple ID (for you or for your kid). If you’re already using Gmail or something, you can use that email address as your Apple ID.

Simple advice for families with Android devices

The main advice for iOS devices is largely the same for Android devices. Android devices, including those made by Google, Samsung and others, all require a Google account. You do not want to share Google accounts among adults or kids. Everyone should have a separate account.

If you want to create an account for an adult, follow these instructions. If you want to create an account for a child, follow these instructions. Once everyone has their own Google account, you will want to download the Google Family Link app, which is available for Android and iOS. While you can control Android devices using the iOS app, I recommend households use either iOS devices or Android devices to keep things simple.

Once you have Family Link set up, you can manage your child’s account and begin tweaking parental controls.

Google published a nice digital wellbeing family guide (PDF link) that’s worth checking out no matter what type of devices your family use.

Originally published on May 21, 2024