As kids grow into tweens and teens you see them wanting tiny electronic and communication items. If you are considering a purchase of something like an Apple iPod Touch for your child or teen you should make the time to become familiar with the settings. Your teen’s first interest will be to load their tunes and apps, but you should also put some thought into how you’d like this child to use their technology. By using an iPod Touch you are opening the world of music, email, and the internet to them. If you do not change the settings you have left them exposed to everything…and I do mean everything. But you are the parent, and you have a chance to make some thoughtful choices to what your child experiences. I wanted to take a moment and document the setting options. If you have an iTouch, iPhone, or iPod you should take careful notes. If you have another piece of equipment – phone, DSi, or other gaming hardware – you should know that most have settings which you can access and password protect.

So have you customized any of the settings on your electronics? How about the electronics that your child interfaces with? I hope this step-by-step instruction encourages you to not be intimidated, but empowered to control the exposure to something appropriate to your family’s values:

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Behold, the basic iPod Touch start screen. In the lower left hand corner you'll see an app icon which is grey and has a gear-like graphic. This is the "Settings" icon, select it.

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The Settings screen controls many of the details for your wi-fi, notifications, mail, and other apps. Usually the settings toward the top are the ones which control master functions on the iTouch. Toward the bottom of the list are the details which are added for some applications. At the bottom of mine I have things like my Tweetdeck, Facebook, NYTimes, Atlas, and Bible apps. What we want to pay attention for our purposes today is the smaller gear-like icon, fourth down on the list. This is the "General" button. Select it.

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There are a lot of useful choices here. "About" tells you the basic information concerning your iTouch which could be helpful in maintenance situations. Look a few items down to the "Location Services". You may want to disable this for a young child since it has the power to post their location on an application like Google Buzz. Scroll further down. The selection we need is called "Restrictions".

This is the screen you need. Notice that the top "Enable Restrictions" button is enabled, but the lower selections are grayed out. You must first select the "Enable Restrictions" button so this function will be activated..and a password screen will appear. Choose a secure password you can remember and then the screen will be enabled after you verify that password.

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It is now enabled. Scroll down to the bottom of this screen.

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The "Allowed Content" area is where you will be setting up the ratings you would like to use.

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This is the setting screen for movie ratings. Here I have set the highest level to be PG-13 since this is my personal iTouch. For a child you would want to use the age-appropriate setting. At the bottom you see the phrase "Allow All Movies". This is the default setting until you make these recommended changes.

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And in the "Music" area the default is to have explicit lyrics, music, and podcast choices, but you can switch this off. This then shows as "Clean" on the main restrictions page.

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You will want to go through each category on the "Allowed Content" list and make your specific changes to the default selections. At the end you have one last choice. You would be quite surprised to find that "Apps" have many inappropriate things for even teens to see. Many of the games you would not purchase because of their ratings or content are available in the app store with no rating. Though the filters are not perfect, you may select these inappropriate apps out in this window...

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...OR return to the top of the Restrictions page to cut off App purchases altogether. I can think of plenty of occasions where it would not be good to have the purchasing button so readily available. To do this you should cut both the "Installing Apps" and then down below the "In-App purchases" off to protect these situations.

After making your selections you will need to use the arrows at the top left of the screen to return to the iTouch’s welcome screen. To access these settings again you will need you password. If you child is a natural-born hacker then you may find that they search out work arounds for these settings. They can reset the device to it’s original factory settings and then reload all their apps…and I’m sure there is a friend at school who might inform them of this little detail. Because they would have to reload every piece of music and application back onto their device it is probably not such an interesting option for them. On a personal note, as you teach your child in the appropriate use of these devices you may want to block certain applications in an effort to eliminate distractions (YouTube Anyone?) or for discipline purposes. Just ask my teen. She lost the privilege of  downloading applications after an incident in our household. (Although she purchases all of her apps with money she has earned, restricting the app purchases – even the free ones – became an appropriate removal of privilege after an issue.)

Honestly, as we parent through the ever changing technology issues presented to our generation it is important to remember that by paying attention to the details we can use these tools as training wheels that will prepare our children to drive their future tech equivalent of a car. I’d love to hear about some of the setting issues or larger parenting issues you’ve experienced. We are all in this together!