How to use parental controls on your phone 

Children just get how smartphones work. In fact, it’s unnerving how capable even the tiniest of toddlers seem to know how to navigate devices compared to us.

The future is becoming increasingly tech-enabled, but that comes with its own risks. 

Phones are good; they can arm children with skills that they might need later in life. The more proficient kids are at swiping, clicking and browsing, the better they’ll fare later on.

But allowing your child access to the internet comes with concerns about them accessing inappropriate content, talking to strangers or racking up big bills buying apps and games. 

The solution? 

Parental controls.

With parental controls, you can have as much – or as little – control as you like, from tweaking a few settings through to creating individual user profiles with different permissions.

This added layer of security will enhance your kid’s browsing experience safer and, more importantly, give you peace of mind. 

Don’t worry, having parental controls doesn’t mean monitoring their every activity or stopping them from accessing things. They can simply help with:

• managing apps and devices  
• blocking in-app purchases
• enabling location tracking
• limiting screen time
• restricting content 

Finding your restriction settings and parental controls – what you do depends on the type of handset you have.

If you’ve got an Android phone, it’s straightforward enough to restrict access to content. Just bear in mind that, depending on which version of the software you’re using, the steps might look a little different.

To get started, open the Google Play Store app and tap the ‘Hamburger’ (the three horizontal lines in the top left of your screen). From there, scroll down and tap ‘Settings’. Then scroll down again until you see ‘Parental Controls’. When you open up this section, you’ll be prompted to create a PIN code and enter it again – this way you’ll know only you can make restrictions.

Once you’ve done that, you can tap into certain categories and start figuring out which restrictions you want to enable. For most apps and games, a number will be displayed, which will relate to ages that the content is deemed appropriate for. Feel free to play around with these settings, then hit ‘Save’.

There’s also Google’s Family Link. This gives you access to a set of tools to help keep your family safe online. From managing your child’s account and data settings, to sharing their location, everything is designed to create healthy digital habits. 

If you’ve got an iPhone it’s easy to add restrictions (even on the iPhone 16).  Go to your Settings app, scroll down to ‘General’ and then scroll again to ‘Restrictions’. Here there’s an option called ‘Enable Restrictions’. Click this and you’ll be prompted to create a Restrictions passcode – this will ensure only you can manage these settings.

From there, you can start restricting apps and services from the list. It’s simple: just tap them on or off (green means on). Scroll down and you’ll see a section called ‘Allowed Content’. This lets you get even more specific. You can control music, podcasts and news – ultimately, if it’s marked explicit, you can restrict it. 

The same goes for other kinds of reading and browsing content too, like apps, books and websites. This is a good option if you’re dealing with young teens; you won’t want to restrict apps or websites completely but will be able to set some control over what they’re seeing.

Kids are always tempted to buy games and make in-app purchases. These things are meant to be addictive.

If you’ve got an Android phone and you’re more concerned with your children racking up big bills than accessing inappropriate content (or you want to do both), then go back to the Google Play Store app in the Settings menu. 

Once you’re here, click on ‘Require authentication for purchases’. Here you can decide what the process should be if someone wants to use your account to buy something, adding a password, for example. Simple.

If you’ve got an iPhone go to your Settings app, scroll down to General > Restrictions. Find ‘Enable Restrictions’ and you can turn off the ‘In-App Purchases’ option to stop free apps from charging a fortune for extras. 

If you want to disable purchasing completely, turn off ‘iTunes Store’, ‘iBooks Store’, ‘Installing Apps’ and ‘In-App Purchases’.

If you’ve got an Android phone there’s a lot of choice when it comes to apps that’ll help you enjoy better visibility and control over what your kids are doing online. 

The same applies if you’ve got an iPhone - just have a quick search on the App Store and you’ll see hundreds of apps designed to help you keep an eye on what your children are doing online. 

Whichever device you’re dealing with, make sure you double-check any apps before downloading them and set up screen timers.

One of the most effective pieces of monitoring technology is the Harmblock+ AI feature that comes with the HMD Fuse. Harmblock+ AI is all about preventing kids from seeing sexual content. 

The feature uses pretrained AI to constantly scan on-screen activity, whether that’s a website or app. It’s ready to block out sexual images and videos, and delete any files stored on the phone of a sexual nature. It even makes it impossible to take photos or videos if it detects nudity through the camera app.

This is the kind of innovation that parents need.

Setting up family accounts and sharing options is also straightforward.

If you’ve got an Android phone the Google Play Family Library does just what it says on the tin. It’s a way for family members to share all kinds of content, even if they’re on different devices and are using different accounts. 

It’s a great way to give kids the freedom to have their own phone or tablet, but then everyone can access the same apps, books and games to avoid racking up hefty bills.

To set up the Family Library, go to the Play Store, tap the Menu and then head to ‘Account’, scroll to ‘Family’ and hit ‘Sign up to Family Library’.

If you’ve got an iPhone, Apple has a service called Family Sharing, which allows up to 6 members of your family to share iTunes, iBooks and App Store purchases without being logged into the same account. This is a great option for teens and older kids who want their own account but also want to be part of the family network too.

To set up Family Sharing, go to the Settings app and hit your name at the top. From there, you should be able to see an option called ‘Set Up Family Sharing’ – click that to start tailoring the settings to suit you and your family.

It’s a good plan to talk to your child about online safety and the technology they’re using. Being open and transparent about what you’re doing is important, so explain why it’s important to put parental control settings in place.

Remember that you’re on the same team. We think that telling them parental controls can be adjusted as they get older is handy – nothing is forever. These settings aren’t for telling them off; they’re about making their phone a safe space so they can explore happily, and you can leave them to it without worrying. 

And that’s what makes the HMD Fuse especially good, as it’s a smartphone with safety and parental settings that’ll grow with your child.