How to use parental controls on your Mac?

In this high tech era, internet has become an integral part of our daily lives. Everybody depends on the internet to perform various tasks every day, especially school going children; need to be able to access the internet on a daily basis to enhance their learning and education. After all, internet is the perpetual source of knowledge but not everything on the internet is educational.

Cyber threats are a very common issue of our times that cannot be ignored. In case you are not supervising your children while they are using the internet, there are many online threats that could put their future in risk. Being a parent, you want your children to have a safe and happy experience on the Mac. Using Parental Controls preferences, you can manage, monitor and control the time your children spend on the Mac and the internet access. Let’s learn how to manage parental controls on your Mac.

Follow the below given steps to set up parent controls on your Mac.

• Select Apple menu> System Preferences.

•  Click “Parental Controls.”

• If it shows “There are no user accounts to manage,” select “Create a new user account with parental control” then click “Continue.”

• Enter an administrator name and password. Click the Age pop-up menu to choose an age. Fill in the name and password information and then click on Create User.

• If it shows “Parental controls let you manage your children’s use of this computer, the applications on it and the Internet” click the lock icon to unlock it.
• Enter an administrator name and password and select a user.

If you previously turned parental controls on and off, click “Enable Parental Controls”. If your child account is not listed there, click the “+” button to create a new user account. Click the Age pop-up menu to select an age and other details and then click Create User.

Once you created the new user account, you may set up the limits on usage as per your preference. Follow the below given steps to do that.

• Under the parental control option, you need to select the child account for that you want to place the restrictions.
• Now select the option “Apps” and  then select “Limit Applications.”

• Use the reveal arrow near the option “Other apps” to view and select only those apps that you want for your child access. Here, applications can be selected individually.
• If an app is selected by default that you don’t want to run, uncheck the option.
• Similarly, you can use many tabs and manage the access to the internet using on-screen options.

This is how you may easily enable and set up parental controls on your Mac and protect your children against various online threats. Limiting their access to suspicious content is really an excellent way to ensure that.