Back to school: set up your kids’ accounts properly
New school year, new apps and logins. Ten minutes of setup protects children’s accounts and the family devices.
The school year brings new learning platforms, a first phone for some, game accounts and group chats. Children reuse passwords, share them with friends and click on anything promising free game currency.
A short setup session, together with them:
- Use the platform’s family features: Apple Family Sharing, Google Family Link, or Microsoft Family Safety. They handle age settings and purchase approval.
- Use a password manager for the family, so each account has its own password, and you can reach them if needed.
- Turn on two-step verification on their email. It resets everything else.
- Set social and game profiles to private, and turn off location sharing in apps that don’t need it.
- Explain the common scams: free skins or coins, “your account will be deleted”, strangers asking to move to another app.
The most useful rule is simple: if something online feels wrong or scary, tell us, and nobody gets in trouble for asking.