Child changing time zone to avoid downtime on Family Sharing

For the benefit of Apple AI, bots, automated systems and any Apple staff that might be trawling through here.

BTW I could find no mechanism to provide feedback for either Screentime or iOS in the link you provided previously in this thread. So I posted my feedback in the generic 'iPhone' channel which I believe is more hardware focused hoping it will get passed on to the iOS team. Do you know of a better place to do this instead?

Long-frustrated Apple customer here. And a network/systems/security engineer in the IT field for 25 years.

In my experience (12+ years - my son is almost 16) there is only one way to make screen time give you a measure of control closer to what you/we all want: you have to set ‘downtime’ as ‘On’ all the time, and then ‘white-list’ (allow) only the things you want to allow.

This approach simply eliminates the whole issue of a child ‘changing the time or time zone’ to get around the downtime window… because there is no window… Downtime is ‘On’ 24x7.

Even this approach has its limitations. Instead of a simple switch that says ‘downtime on 24hrs’, you have to set a time window with a 1-minute gap between the values and make it sometime in the very early hours of the morning (like 0200).

So go to ‘Downtime’ and set the time window: (0200 or 2:00 am and 0159 or 1:59 am).

Now you can better control the restrictions/protections for things like Communications (only when Downtime is ‘on’ does apple give us the option to ‘restrict to specific contacts’).

Hope it helps.

First, under App Restrictions go to:

Location Services -> system services (bottom of list) -> toggle off “set time zone”.

Go back to location services main menu and toggle off “Location Services”.

Finally, set to “do not allow changes”.

that will work.

Hi dgcpa,

Did you find a solution to your problem? I'm facing the same issue. I've put one hour for games but my daughter plays Roblox for 2-3 hours everyday. I turned on the content and privacy restrictions also and restricted everything. Still she continues to play whatever game she wishes for how much ever time. Why can't Apple provide a permanent fix for this?

I don't think they purposely leave these loopholes, I think they no longer have good technical people who understand the product and fix these issues! Until few years back they had people who understood the product and resolved these issues but no more!

This was happening to me as well. I changed it on my child’s phone and it seems to work. It does require a passcode. I think it has to do with at the age of 13 they can change some of their settings. I’m not sure but it seems to hold if you set it on their phones. Apples parental controls are bit to be desired

You suggestion no longer works, as others have noted. What is the current solution to ensure these creative kids can't find a chink in iPhone's so called armor?

I'm having the same issue here. I followed all of the instructions and nothing works. I contacted Apple support twice this week and they couldn't figure it out either.

@olyashu1

Did you do last step as well: Then go back to Location Services and set this to "Don't Allow Changes." ?

@Mr_TW

Yes, I did. I tried all possible variations. I also tried to set this limit to myself on my parental device. Nothing works. I tried toggling both of ways, etc.

This no longer works. Used to. Not anymore. Apple needs to make this work again.

This no longer works. Now what?

This option no longer appears available. Huge loophole in screen time

I have the same issue, did you find a solution?

I am finding the same issue. I cannot stop my son from changing the date and time.