Joanna Stern, with another excellent piece for the Wall Street Journal. (Apple News+) This time about Apple’s Screen Time, which I’ve been trying to use successfully for years. Glad I’m not alone in this thinking.

Stern’s tweet:

Apple’s Screen Time parental controls are broken, and it feels like an afterthought for the company.

The latest example? Two security researchers have been reporting a bug to Apple since 2021 that lets kids visit blocked sites.

Only after I called did Apple say it would be fixed in the next software update.

These seem like more substantial bugs that can be easily fixed in the “next software update.”

Nick Heer summarizes the problem perfectly:

One could reasonably argue nobody should entirely depend on software to determine how devices are used by themselves or their children, but I do not think many people realistically do. It is part of a combination of factors. Screen Time should at perform the baseline functions it promises. It sucks how common problems are basically ignored until Stern writes about them.