Mobile Phones and Smart Watches

To foster a healthier relationship with technology for your family, help them set up "Do Not Disturb" hours on their mobile phones. This simple feature mutes calls, texts, and other notifications during scheduled times, which helps minimise distractions, improve concentration, and promote better sleep.

How to Get Started:

Most smartphones offer customisable "Do Not Disturb" schedules. You can typically find this feature in your phone's main settings menu under labels like "Focus," "Digital Wellbeing," or "Screen Time."

To enable this feature:

1. Open the Settings app on the smartphone.

2. Look for an option named "Do Not Disturb," "Focus," or "Digital Wellbeing."

3. From here, you can create a custom schedule for when the phone should remain silent, such as during homework hours or overnight.

Keep in mind that menu layouts can differ between phone models or software versions. If you can't find the setting, a quick search online for your device's instructions will guide you.  The links below will take you to the support pages for the most commonly used smartphones.

Modern smartphones offer powerful features to help you manage usage. Look for these two key areas in your phone's settings menu:

• Parental Controls: These tools can provide robust control over a device. You can often limit internet access, block specific apps, and prevent unwanted app store downloads or purchases. These settings may be found within "Screen Time" (iOS) or "Digital Wellbeing & parental controls" (Android), or through linked accounts like Google Family Link.  

It should be noted that Google and Apple parental controls typically disable automatically or offer more control to the child's account when they turn 13 years old because this is generally recognised as the "digital age of consent" in many regions, including for compliance with regulations like the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the Scotland.  At this age, platforms are no longer legally required to obtain parental consent for data collection, giving the child more autonomy over their online experience and account settings.

• Digital Wellbeing: These features are designed to help you build healthier screen time habits. Use them to set daily timers for specific apps, schedule "Focus" or "Wind Down" modes to limit notifications, and track your overall usage to meet personal screen time goals.

Smart Watches

Generally, smartwatches are designed to mirror the notification settings of their connected phone. If your phone's 'Do Not Disturb,' 'Focus,' or 'Digital Wellbeing' mode is active and set to silence notifications, your phone won't send those notifications to your watch. While most watches mirror these settings effectively, some models might not. To test your watch, activate 'Do Not Disturb,' 'Focus,' or 'Digital Wellbeing' mode on your phone and then ask a friend or family member to call or message you. If your watch still receives the call or message notification, you may need to adjust the settings directly on your watch or within its companion app.  The same test can be done by switching your phone off to ensure calls or messages are not sent to your phone.