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Child with Amazon Fire tablet

How to Set Up Amazon Fire Tablet so that Your Child Can Access Content that You Choose Only

Tablets can be amazing gadgets for kids. They can watch videos, play games, read books, and more, yet you should have the option to protect them from the inappropriate content. Following are the steps to do that.

Secure your account

Open the “Settings” screen, find the “Personal” option and click “Security and Privacy”. Make sure you have a Lock-Screen Password set. You can pick either a passcode or a Pin; select whichever you consider progressively secure and simple to remember.

Setting this will guarantee your kid can’t get to your screen by essentially leaving their own. In your monitor, a youngster may incidentally remove applications, delete videos from your watch list, and even include or expel things from your Amazon list of things to get. It’s ideal for playing it safe and putting these features far off.

Create a child profile for your child

Pull down the list from the top of the screen, and tap your user symbol. Here, search for the “Plus” button to add new users, clicking OK to confirm this step.

Here, click Add a Child Profile (grown-up profiles are also accessible, should your partner need one). Then enter the details: name, date of birth, etc.

You can choose between two accessible subjects. “Blue Sky” is for the children under the age of 9 while the “Midnight Black” theme is for kids somewhere in the range of 9-12. At the point when you’ve settled on your decisions, click “Add Profile”.

Add content to your child profile

With the profile made, the following screen will ask you to include appropriate content. You can choose books, videos, recordings, applications, and so on that you are OK with your kid exploring.

Tap to choose the content you’re OK with and then tap “Done”. If whenever you need to change the material the child can get to, open “Settings” then go to “Profile” and “Family Library”, at that point click “Add Content” or “Remove Content”.

You can also check the Age Filters screen. This is a component you can flip on or off varying; when on, it lets you set an age extend for the material your kid can see. If you need to guarantee your little one isn’t viewing horrible videos (or other extraordinary shows on Amazon Video), this is a significant element.

You should slide the lower age and upper age range bars as suitable. The tablet will guide you on what number of applications, recordings, and books are distinguishable from the chosen extend. At the point when you’re OK, click “Back” to exit. At last, make a point to set the “Enable In-App Purchasing” setting to off. That will keep them away from piling on charges in games.

Set Up Screen Time

You most likely don’t want your kids spending the entire day stuck to their tablets, particularly whenever there’s an opportunity to do outdoor tasks. So setting up some time limits is a smart thought.

To do this, open “Set Daily Goals” and “Time Limits”, and click the switch to on. You’ll see a screen split into two tabs: “Weekdays” and “Weekends”. Every one of these lets you set a “Bedtime” when the tablet will off, and “wake up time” when it opens up once more.

Here you can also set “Educational Goals”, with time limits for apps, videos, audiobooks and books. There’s additionally a “Learn First” option, letting you block fun material until “Educational Goals” are met.

Further down, you can set a “Total Screen Time” (so your kid may have, say, two hours of tablet time inside a 16-hour term). You’ll additionally discover “Time” by “Activity Type”, where you can set time limits for each activity.

Set Web Content

Your child’s tablet must be online to get to Amazon content. Yet, imagine a scenario where you need to restrict your kid’s access to the web.

Open the kid’s profile again and search for “Web Settings”. Here you’ll discover the switch of “Enable Web Browser”. When clicked, you’ll have the option of “Limit Web Content”, where you can include Websites, and Web Videos, using the “Plus” button.

Then, the Settings tab lets you “Enable Pre-Approved Web Content”. This is Amazon’s curated content, so you can anticipate that the material should be appropriate for your kid.

Review Online Activities of your Child

In the event that you need to see your youngster’s tablet activities (maybe to check whether TV shows are more well-known than games), Amazon offers an element that lets you check what they’re doing. You can, without many efforts, deal with this option of “Settings” then “Parental Controls”. Look down to the “Activity Center”, and on “Monitor This Profile”.

Wrap up

At this point, you should have total control over your kid’s Amazon Fire tablet. Your child can access content that you have selected only.

Child with tablet

How to Set Time Limits on Amazon Fire Tablet

Amazon Fire tablets have powerful parental controls that allow restricting screen time for your child. Here’s how to set them up.

First, open FreeTime app and tap on cog icon next to your child’s name:

Next, tap ‘Set Daily Goals & Time Limits’ under Child Settings:

Enable checkbox on top right on the next screen. Here you can set different schedule for weekdays and weekends:

Set Total Screen Time to how long you want to allow your child to use the tablet per day.

I suggest to also set Bedtime (curfew time) – you don’t want your child to stay up late or get up in the middle of the night to play games or watch videos. Our house rule is no devices after 8 pm.

You can also require your child to reach an educational goal before they can access entertainment content. For example your child should read books (on Fire tablet) for one hour before they could do anything else. That feature didn’t work for my son though – he would simply open a book and do something else while tapping on the screen from time to time waiting for the time to pass.

You can also restrict time by activity:

This lets you set time limit for using apps, reading books, listening to Audible, watching videos and browsing the web. I like to restrict using apps (that means playing games) and watching videos but leave reading books unrestricted.

Don’t forget to switch the tablet to your child profile before handing it over to your child.

How to Block YouTube on Amazon Fire Tablet

There is no doubt that YouTube has a lot of great content for the whole family, but there is also a lot of content that could be inappropriate for children. Being able to block YouTube from your Amazon Fire device is going to be useful. This is also good if you are looking to give these devices to several children at different times. Either way, we are going to show you how to get this done by using Amazon FreeTime.

1-The first step is to tap on the “FreeTime” tab that is situated on your home screen:

2-The second step is to tap “Add a Child” on the following screen:

3-Now enter the child’s name and their date of birth. You can also choose the type of theme you prefer.

4-You can now decide what content you want to add for your child to use. This means that you can choose any game or application you want. You can always add more content later if you wish:

5-The following screen is going to give you the option to decide if your child will be given access to the web browser. If you decide to allow it, you can also use the Amazon filter to allow your kid to access only specific sites that are available. These are also settings that you can change at any time:

6-You can always enable and disable the web browser at any moment by opening FreeTime, tapping on the cog next to your child name and scrolling down to the “Web Settings” section:

7- Amazon approves sites like Nickelodeon, PBS kids and Science Bob by default. You can choose to block all websites and then add any websites you want to allow your child to access.

8-You can easily access the list of children and choose any name you want to switch to the desired profile:

Blocking YouTube on Amazon Fire without using Free Time

If for some reason you don’t want to use Amazon FreeTime, you can still block YouTube on your Fire tablet by blocking web browsing completely. Your child won’t be able to access any website, though. Here’s how to do it:

1-Open settings and tap on parental controls; this will allow you to set the password. Once you have done that, just tap on “Amazon Content and Apps”:

2-Now go to the web browser section and tap on “unblocked”.

3-You can also block any access to Amazon Stores and protect your purchases to prevent your child from installing the YouTube app.

The good news is that by using any of these methods you are going to be able to protect your child from a large amount of harmful content that they could accidentally stumble upon.


Safe Vision helps parents to control YouTube videos for their children.

Guided Access to the Rescue: Using Your Apple iPad’s Built-In Time Limit Function to Manage Your Kids’ Device Use

Today’s kids are more tech-savvy than ever, and an entire generation of children are currently growing up having never known life without mobile devices and ubiquitous internet access. Unfortunately, that also means a huge number of kids are spending hours each day with their eyes glued to phones and tablets.

If you’re a parent with an iPad in the house, you’ve almost certainly dealt with the frustration of trying to peel your child away from it. Giving them time limits might help, but unless you’re closely monitoring them, the odds are they’ll lose track of time and keep on playing or watching long after they’re supposed to be doing their homework or getting ready for bed.

That’s where Apple’s “guided access” feature can be an absolute godsend. Guided access allows you to set hard time-limits on your iPad that can’t be overridden without a password. That means when your kid’s time is up, it’s up — and the tablet itself becomes the bad guy instead of you!

It’s a great feature because over time your kids learn to accept it, and eventually, when the clock runs out, they’ll just put the tablet down and move on.

Here are the steps to follow to enable guided access and time limits on your iPad:

Step One: Click on the gear icon or ask Siri to open settings, tap on “General” in the left-hand menu, then find and tap “Accessibility” on the right-hand side:

Step Two: Once in the accessibility menu tap “Guided Access” under the “Learning” heading:

Step Three: In the guided access menu, slide the guided access slider to the right to enable it, and then tap “Time Limits”:

Step Four: Set the alarm sound and enable the “Speak” feature. This will allow the iPad to make an audible announcement when the time is about to expire.


Guided access time limits will now be enabled on your device. To access the function and set a time limit, use the following steps:

Step One: With the app your child wants to use open, quickly press the home button three times to bring up the guided access controls at the top and bottom of the screen:

Step Two: In the bottom right corner, tap time limit options and set your desired time limit.

Step Three: Tap the “Start” button in the top right corner to start the clock.

It’s that easy! Once the timer has been started, it’ll tick down until just before it expires, at which point it’ll provide a warning. Once time’s up completely, an overlay will black out the screen explaining that the allowed time has expired.

If you want to allow more time, just triple-press the home button and enter the guided access passcode.

With guided access time limits enabled, you can let your iPad do the policing for you, helping to pre-empt the arguments (or even tantrums) that often result from taking away what has become most kids’ favorite toy. Most importantly, it’ll help your kids avoid the device addiction that so many of today’s youth struggle with. Thanks, Apple!

Child with iPhone

How to let your child play on your iPhone without it ending in drama

There comes a time when you need to keep your child entertained and all you have is your smartphone. Perhaps you are stuck in the traffic or sitting in a waiting room.

There are lots of great child apps and games that will keep your child busy for sure, but when it comes to finishing and handing the phone back there is usually a little drama. Your child is in the middle of something and doesn’t want to part with this great toy. You end up being the “baddie” because you took away all the fun.

The solution is to get help from the technology. You can set a timer on your iPhone and when it finishes the phone will turn itself off and stay locked until you enter a passcode.

The phone can even announce that their time will soon finish. No problem: your child understands that the fun activity just finished on its own and hands your phone back to you.

Here’s how to set it up.

Open Settings, then Accessibility. Scroll down to the end and tap Guided Access in the “Learning” section:

Guided access settings screenshot

Enable Guided Access and tap Time Limits. Enable Speak there and set alarm sound:

Guided access time limits and alarm screenshot

Now, open any app and press the Home button three times (you will need to press it fairly quickly). You should see the Guided Access screen:

Start guided access screenshot

Tap “Options” on the bottom and set time limit:

Guided access time limit screenshot

Tap Done and then Start. Your iPhone is ready for your child.

Another great benefit of guided access is that your child is unable to switch to another app on your phone and mess with the settings, delete something important or access something inappropriate.

See also Use Guided Access with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch on Apple website.