Our Story

Why I took the iPads away

The parental controls caught the AI friend app, but they couldn't make it safe. Here's what I did.

Two years ago, I took the iPads away. My kids each had one from family. We kept them in the closet for a while because I wasn't ready, and when we finally handed them out, I set everything up the right way: their own accounts under our family, every restriction on, and they had to ask me for more time or for anything that cost money.

It was still a mess. I was paying for games and arguing about it, and I forgot to cancel a free trial once and got charged $80 for a year of a Bluey game nobody wanted. Somebody's iPad was always dead or lost somewhere in the house, and even with a no iPads in bedrooms rule, I'd find one in a bedroom. The controls just weren't enough.

But that's not what did it. My daughter came in and asked me to approve an app. An ad had popped up in the middle of a little marble game, for an AI friend app that said it could be her friend. She told me, “Mom, I can talk to it about my day when you're not around.”

A ten second ad had made her comfortable enough to want to talk to it the way she talks to me, and that made me really uneasy.

I sat her down and explained what an AI chatbot is, and that first conversation didn't go well. She yelled that I didn't understand and it was just an app. So I told both kids we were done with the iPads: “That's my decision, and it's final. I'm the parent, and I have to keep you safe.”

They went in the downstairs closet, chargers too. There was a lot of asking that first week, and then they just stopped. I couldn't believe it only took a week. Now they play outside, color, do crafts and run around with the neighbors.

The iPads still come out for airplanes and long road trips, with a few movies I download before we go. When the wheels touch down, my son deletes the app himself and shows me, proud of it. For the rest of the trip, the iPads stay in their travel backpacks in a closet.