In today's digital age, children are exposed to a huge amount of content through their smartphones, including explicit or inappropriate images. As a concerned parent or carer, it's essential to take proactive steps to protect your child from stumbling upon or being sent nude photos on their smartphone.
Implementing effective controls outlined below can create a safer online environment.
One important addition Apple introduced in the latest iOS 17 update is 'Sensitive Content Warnings,' a feature designed to protect users from unwanted content, such as unsolicited explicit images.
Using on-device machine learning, it analyses and blocks potentially inappropriate photos and videos. While these warnings are initially turned off, activating them is a straightforward process.
The Sensitive Content Warning stops you or your child from getting unwanted nude photos or videos on your Apple device.
If Sensitive Content Warning sees a photo or video with possible nudity, it blurs the image, warns about sensitive content and suggests ways to get help.
If you have physical access to your child's iPhone, use the following steps.
Sensitive content will now be blurred across Messages, AirDrop and Video (FaceTime) messages.
When a nude image is sent, a warning will appear saying that the photo could be sensitive. The message will offer ways to get help.
If you're unable to access your child's iPhone directly, you can turn on Communication Safety, a feature designed to prevent your child from accessing or sharing photos or videos containing nudity. Communication Safety is accessible through the Family Sharing feature, which allows adults in the family to oversee the devices of children under 18.
Please keep in mind, while parental controls offer support, they aren't entirely foolproof. It is essential to educate your children about the risks of sharing explicit content such as nudes online.
Android devices also provide parental control features that allow you to restrict and filter content, including blocking explicit or mature content on your child's device. The specific steps and features may vary depending on the Android version and the device manufacturer as different Android devices often come with customised interfaces.
Read the advice below on how to set up content filtering on your child’s Android device.
Enabling parental controls on an Android device allows you to limit the content that can be downloaded or bought from Google Play app, depending on its maturity level. It's important to note that purchase approval settings only apply to transactions made through Google Play's billing system.
4. Turn on Parental controls.
5. To protect parental controls, you will create a four-digit PIN which your child doesn't know.
6. Select the type of content you want to filter and then choose how to filter or restrict access. You will be able to set restrictions for:
For example, on Apps and games, the various Pan European Game Information (PEGI) age ratings are visible - the content icons are there to help you decide what games are suitable for your child.
The content of games with a PEGI 3 rating is considered suitable for all age groups.
Parental controls only apply to the Android device you added them on. To put parental controls on another device, repeat the steps above on the other devices.
SafeSearch is a feature that can be enabled on Google Search results to restrict or blur explicit or inappropriate content in search results.
SafeSearch is designed to provide a safer browsing experience, especially for users such as children as it will filter out explicit material such as nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material, violence and gore.
Follow the advice below to set-up Google SafeSearch on your child’s Android or iPhone device.
Please be aware, SafeSearch only changes what you or your child can see on Google Search, not on other search engines or websites that they visit directly.
Google Family Link is a parental control app that allows you to set digital ground rules for your child's Android or iPhone device.
You can use the Google Family Link app to:
