According to several news reports, Apple is presently involved in a cat-and-mouse game with kids who are relentlessly trying to break its Screen Time restrictions.
The company has recently also been receiving quite a lot of criticism for not acting fast enough to plug the loopholes as they become apparent. A couple of these loopholes, as well as instructions for parents on how to shut them down, can be found on the Protect Young Eyes website.
Despite the loopholes, and a number of others not listed on the site, regularly being shared by children on social media, Apple has only patched some of them.
According to Chris Mckenna, the man who founded the internet safety group Protect Young Eyes: “These are not rocket science, backdoor, dark web sort of hacks.”
He added that he found it very surprising that Apple hasn’t taken the fact seriously that a determined middle school kid can easily find these loopholes with quite a short web search.
He conceded that Apple has been making small changes and improvements to Screen Time recently, but nevertheless believes that various loopholes kids can use to circumvent Screen Time limits still remain unpatched.
Although Apple has obviously failed to resolve various issues related to Screen Time, the firm still claims that it remains committed to making the feature better.
In an emailed statement, Apple spokesperson Michele Wyman stated that her company remained committed to providing device owners with “powerful tools to manage their iOS devices”. She added that Apple was continuously trying to improve them even further.
Ms Wyman did not, however, specifically address the Screen Time issue, or Apple’s failure to react promptly. Apple launched Screen Time as part of iOS 12 last year, but it only came to the Mac a week ago when the company released macOS Catalina.