Apple just gave parents more iPhone controls

Hey Friends!

Sorry… but how are some of our kids already out of school for the summer?? What the heck happened! We have been in full summer chaos mode over here but we are not mad about it. The schedules have loosened and someone in our house has already had a popsicle before 9am. And let’s not talk about how we’re still spending time at the rink. Summer clothing and rink time just don’t really vibe. Anyway, this time of year is always so exciting. Another school year is done, summer plans await, and we’re all just hanging on for dear life.

Summer also means more unstructured device time for many families. More "can I just watch one more," more gaming marathons, more group chats blowing up at all hours. And this week, there was actually some good news on that front, plus some big news out of Ottawa that every Canadian parent needs to hear about. Let's get into it.

Big news out of Apple and its all about the parental controls

At its big developer event on June 8th, Apple announced a suite of new parental control features coming this fall with iOS 27. The headline additions include a streamlined Child Account setup that walks parents through protections step by step (something we’ve included as part of our Screen Sense Guide for a while now), a new "Ask to Browse" feature that works just like Ask to Buy, but for Safari, and a redesigned Screen Time interface that's supposed to be easier to navigate. On the surface, it sounds like a big win for parents.

Don’t get us wrong, this is a win in a lot of ways, but we want to give you the full picture, because this is also a large tech company making a very calculated move.

Most of what Apple announced this week isn't new. Content restrictions, communication limits, downtime scheduling, app approvals have all existed inside Screen Time for years. What Apple is doing is surfacing them, simplifying the setup flow, and making them easier to find. This is important because the number of families who have Screen Time turned on but have never actually configured it properly is enormous. Turned on is not the same as set up. So if this update gets more parents deeper into their settings, that's a real win.

But we want to be clear about our thoughts on why this is happening now. There has been tons of pressure on tech companies to prove they take child safety seriously. This announcement did not come from Apple suddenly prioritizing kids. Child safety does not appear in Apple's corporate values. It is not a stated mission for the company. This is, at least in part, a liability play and that's something every parent deserves to know when they read the headlines.

Use the tools because they're worth using. The Screen Sense Guide walks you through exactly which iPhone settings actually do the heavy lifting and how to find them, because even with Apple's improvements, the ones that matter most are still buried. Just don't mistake a corporation updating its settings for a corporation that has your child's best interests at heart. Those are two very different things.

Canada Just Tabled a Social Media Ban for Kids Under 16

On June 10th, Canada's government officially tabled Bill C-34 the includes the Safe Social Media Act. This would ban social media accounts for anyone under the age of 16 in Canada. It follows Australia's move last year and is part of a wave of child protection laws sweeping democracies around the world.

The bill creates a brand new federal regulator called the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, which would have the power to approve platforms' safety plans, investigate complaints, and levy fines of up to 3% of a company's global revenue or $10 million (whichever is higher). Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and X would all fall under the rules, as would AI chatbot services like ChatGPT and Gemini (woohoo!). The bill also requires platforms to actively address seven categories of harmful content, including CSAM, cyberbullying of children, content that induces self-harm, non-consensual intimate imagery, and content promoting terrorism or violence.

The tricky part and the part that no one is quite sure about how it’ll work yet is enforcement. Because to verify that someone is under 16, you essentially have to verify everyone's age. What technology counts as adequate age verification will be decided after the bill passes. Canadian Parliament also breaks for summer on June 19th, which means the bill won't see real movement until fall at the earliest, and could take a year or more to actually take effect.

Here’s what you can do now:

The most important thing right now is to know this is happening and keep following it. For Canadian parents especially, this could change how your kids access social media and it signals clearly that governments are no longer treating platforms as off-limits. Is this a fool proof plan? Nope. We suggest deciding as a family how you’d like to respond once this gets implemented.

In the meantime, you don't have to wait for laws to be passed. Platform-level settings don't protect your child the way device-level controls do, and this Canadian bill itself is a reminder that parental oversight right now is still the most reliable tool we have

We’ve been having a lot of conversations recently about teen mental health. Not in a scary, doom-and-gloom way, but in a real, honest, what-is-actually-going-on way. Last week on our podcast, we went there. Are our kids more anxious than ever, or are we just finally using the right language? What's the difference between being nervous, shy, anxious, or actually depressed? And how much of it connects to the phones and social media that have basically become our kids' entire social lives?

It's the first episode of our summer series and it's one we think everyone should listen to. New episodes drop every Monday — find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

And if the episode leaves you thinking about screens and what you actually want summer to look like in your house, we made something for that too. Our free guide, Less Phone. More Life., is the no-judgement starting point we wish we'd had. Grab your free copy here.

—Cat & Nat