How To Manage Your Kid’s Contacts In iOS 13.3

iOS 13.3 is here. While you wait for it to download and install onto your device, you have two options. You can scan through Apple’s list of fixes and changes—which only eat up a fraction of the time it takes to just download iOS 13.3—or you can stick with us, and we’ll show you how to set up the big parental control feature that Apple’s dropping in this update.

Much to your child’s probable dislike, iOS 13.3 allows parents to set even stricter limits for who their kids can talk to—how they can do it and when they can. To get started, pull up Screen Time via the iOS Settings app. I don’t have a family, but you should be able to now tap on any children within your Apple family and set up Screen Time controls on their devices.

The new “Communication Limits” option is what you’ll want to look for, and it’ll allow you to decide whether everyone, or a subset of your child’s contacts, get to communicate with them over Phone, FaceTime, or Messages during the kid’s allowed Screen Time—anyone, or just their contacts.

Once your kid burns past their daily limit, you can also set who is allowed to contact them during this “Downtime.” And you get to be granular with this one—you pick specific contacts, rather than giving all of your kid’s contacts permission to bother them.

You can also edit your kid’s contact list

If your child shouldn’t be talking to that kid down the street—even because of a temporary grounding—you can now enforce this a little better than before. iOS 13 allows you to edit your child’s contact list, which you can do by pulling up their profile on Screen Time (as before) and tapping the “Manage [name] Contacts” option. You’ll have to approve this request on your kid’s device, but once you do, you’ll be able to edit their contacts (adding or deleting people) as needed.

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