Setting Up Family Internet Limits in Your Home

Gone are the days when families would gather around the TV on a regular basis and watch the SAME show.  Granted, this still does happen, but not as frequently as it once did. 

With YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and other streaming apps available on any device, it’s harder to keep track which shows/movies your children are watching, let alone how many hours they are sitting in front of their phones or tablets!

Although most new routers and broadband Internet companies allow you to block certain sites and create limited parental controls, they are not enough to set up Internet limits and help parents monitor their child’s online activity in their home.

We recently tested out Circle with Disney, a device that plugs into your broadband Internet router to allow parents to filter content, create Internet limits, reduce the amount of time your child spends online, and set curfews for every device in the home.

Circle is a must-have product for parents of any aged children.  It gives you control over all online experiences in the home, including…

• Smart TV’s
• Gaming consoles
• Tablets
• Phones
• Laptops
• PC’s
• Other Internet-connected devices (Blue-ray players, Roku, etc.)

NOTE – all of these devices, including the Smart TV, can still be used by your children, it’s just the online connection to the Internet that you can cut off.

In our household, tablets and smartphones are the preferred choices of my children, who are aged 12 and 15.

How Circle Helps You Parent

Once you set up Circle by connecting it to your home router, it does an entire inventory of all wired and WiFi online devices in your home.  Most of them are clearly labeled so you know what devices they are.  Your children’s’ tablets and phones will pop up here (as well as your’s and your spouse’s).

Using the Circle app, you will create a profile for each member of the family.  Then you can assign devices to each family member.  So for example, I added my daughter’s iPhone 5 and iPad 2 under her profile.  Under my son’s profile, I added the phone I sometimes let him use and the Xbox One.  

What if several family members share the same device?  No problem, just attach the device to each family member’s profile.

Attaching devices to profiles is the first step you need in setting Internet limits in your home.

Features

Now I can easily put the same Internet limits on all the devices each of my children use on a regular basis.  With Circle, here’s what can be done…

Filter Content – Circle comes with an easy filtering categorization – Pre-K, Kid, Teen, and Adult.  I simply select one of these filters, dependent upon my child’s age, to help ensure they see age-appropriate content.  I can also filter out specific platforms/channels.  For example, I blocked out HBO, Hulu, Musical.ly, Periscope, Reddit, and Tumbler on my kids’ devices.

Online Time Limits – I can set time limits on particular platforms for each of my children.  For example, I limit the time my son can spend on YouTube for 1 1/2 hours a day.  Whether he’s watching YouTube on the phone he uses or his PC, his time is limited.  I can also limit games, social media, sports, you name it.  I can make a weekday and a weekend schedule.

Bedtime – No devices can connect to WiFi for my son beginning at 10pm up until 6am the next morning.  I can make a separate bedtime for the weekend too if I choose.  My daughter, who is 3 years older, has a bedtime start of 11:15pm. I even added a bedtime for my own devices too to ensure I don’t get tempted to stay up later than I should.  Now you can feel comfortable that your kids aren’t playing or chatting when they should be sleeping. Although, we recommend all family devices removed from bedrooms after a certain hour, say 8pm or 9pm.

Observe Online Usage – Now this is really cool.  You can get an overview of the time your child spent each day online…right down to the app or websites visited.  See where your kids are spending their time by apps, category, and websites.  See the total for the day, week, or month!

Pause – wish you could put life on pause sometimes?  Well, Circle will allow you to pause your household Internet!  One touch from your Circle app and all the Internet in the house pauses – no streaming, no website searching, you won’t even be able to ask your Google Home for a joke.  Use the pause button for dinners, offline playtime, or if needed, until all chores for the day are finished. Just press unpause to resume your Internet.  Slick!  Imagine yielding that kind of control!  🙂

Reward – Easily reward your children with extra screen time by extending daily limit times, Bedtime, or weekend time.  

Setting Internet Limits

Once you assign devices to each child, you can begin setting Internet limits.  One child’s devices might include a tablet, phone, gaming console, and his or her PC.  Another child might just use a tablet.  If your child is older, you can limit Xbox and his/her phone and tablet, but enable his/her PC to do his/her homework.

If you punish your child by saying you’re going to turn off access to Xbox or their tablet for the week, but then forget to turn it off, you can check your app to see if s/he was sneaking the use of the banished item when you weren’t around.  You, as a parent, still knows what is going on in the household.

Or you can allow all devices to be used but turn off access to certain apps – like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, HBO, Musical.y, etc.  At WellConnectedMom, we are big proponents of elevated responsibility. 

Give your child a little bit of responsibility with a few apps to begin with.  As they show they are mature, you can increase the apps they have access to.  Learn more about some good technology parenting tips in our article, Buying Your Tween’s Phone, What To Know.

Circle with Disney

Pros:

• Reasonably priced
• No monthly fees
• Can control all devices in your home connected to your router’s WiFi
• Easy to set up
• Comes with a free app to control WiFi access from anywhere in the world
• Allows parent to set up different limits for each child
• Discourages tampering if kids try to unplug from the wall outlet (continues to work with built-in battery!)
• The Usage report is so helpful to identify your child’s usage and trends of social media, Netflix, and other media content
• Controls all devices on your home’s Internet…including your kids’ friends’ devices using your WiFi in your home!

Cons:

• Phones and tablets using mobile data will not be blocked, only the Internet data from your router
• You will not be able to review emails, in-app messaging, movies or shows watched, or be alerted of bad language, bullying, or critical buzz words (drugs, joint, suicide, etc.)in online conversations
• Cannot track or control behavior on downloaded apps that do not require  the Internet
• Devices shared by more than one family member are hard to control – better to use restrictions for the youngest person to be safe but need to lift when an older family member wants to use

* I was given a Circle with Disney to test and set Internet limits in our household, much to the dismay of our children.  All opinions are my own.