The amount of time our kids will justifiably sit in front of technology has recently gone thru the roof. I find it extremely useful to see data about what my kids are doing while consuming this much screen time.

The following information is meant to provoke general thoughts from the audience and act as a source of information for all trying to stay ahead of our children with technology. I welcome questions via comments below and will do my best to respond quickly.

Most of my professional experience rest in Microsoft Software but I find myself more and more drawn to Apple Platforms (iPhone, MacBooks, iPads) in my family life. Below are some screen shots showing how I monitor to understand my kids digital life. The information below assumes you have a password to your child’s account and that you’re logged in on this account.

All screenshots are captured from my MacBook Air running macOS Catalina version 10.15.4. This is important as different versions of macOS may not have these features and the screen shots may look a bit different. You can verify this as seen below.

Goto: Apple Button>About this Mac

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Now, if we are on the same page with versions great! If not, I beg you to take the time and make sure all your kids devices are completely up-to-date. Software vendors constantly fix things, add features and ensure that the software is as safe as it can be before users add variation.

What are my kids doing with their digital day?

The answer is in “Screen Time” and hopefully you have it enabled. If not, have a look at this support article from Apple. When you enable this it will require you to set a Screen Time passcode; remember this code and DO NOT let your child have it. You will have to change it eventually because they watch everything you do and will figure out within a few weeks.🤪

Let’s have a look at what I find so useful.

Goto: System Preferences>Screen Time> App Usage

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The “App Usage” tab gives you a snapshot of what they have been doing. You can can look at it by App or Categories. The graph from the image above is a grouping by category and I find it very informative for a quick idea of whats going on. I love to dig into the “Apps” data as it shows how much time they spent in each application. As of this moment it is my opinion that the time just means the application was running and not that they were actively engaged in the app. For example; I keep Twitter running in the background while I work during the day but I may not look at it for more than a few minutes an hour. When I look at my “Social Networking” Category it shows over 8 hours. Keep these things in mind when digging thru this data.

Goto: System Preferences>Screen Time>App Limits

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The “App Limits” tab does just what it says, it gives you the ability to set a limit on the amount of time a certain app can run without override by a user with the Screen Time passcode that was set. The new phrase that will resonate thru the halls of your home will be “Can I have more time”. Sorry in advance, but this is a great reminder of how much time they are spending online and a chance to ask what they need more time for. No, you cannot watch more YouTube is my mantra!

In my example I have a blanket limit on everything plus a specific limit on YouTube. So on the weekends Piper (A.K.A Pink) is allowed 2 hours on any application except YouTube and Monday thru Friday she is allowed 5 hours on any application except YouTube. I limit YouTube to 30 minutes on any day otherwise she will get lost all day. One point of note, Piper is not an admin on the account and therefore cannot install an application without having me do it. I highly recommend restricting administrative access to computers for this and many other reason that I hope to document in another post.

Above and beyond restricting how long an application can be used, “Downtime” gives us the ability to set a schedule that defines when the “App Limits” time may be consumed.

Goto: System Preferences>Screen Time>Down Time

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This screen shot is the only one I captured from my Account as I have administrative rights and can manage all users in my “Family”. See this article to understand how Apple defines a “Family” and how to set it up. So Piper’s Downtime settings prevent her from using any of her Apple devices between the hours of 9PM thru 7AM the next morning. You can grant exceptions for things as you see fit. I have set an exception for Piper’s iPhone to allow the Phone App to be used at any time as I would never want her to not be able to use the phone as a phone. This opinion may change as she grows up.😳

All and all Apple has done a great job with implementation and modification to their Parental Control interface called “Screen Time” and I highly suggest you start using it to understand what your kids are doing online. This blog just scratches the surface on the subject so if you have questions or comments we would love to discuss them in the comments below.

A long time friend contacted me this evening as he was concerned that his 6 year old portable hard drive was starting to fail and wanted my opinion on what he should replace it with. My initial thought was that no one is still using portable hard drives in today’s age of cheap cloud based storage solutions so I began to ask questions about what he was trying to accomplish.

I quickly discovered, as I have with so many others, that my friend was working around the pain points he deals with on a daily basis due to outdated technology solutions at work. Specifically, his job requires that he connect to a server hosted at the office via a VPN connection to access files he needs to perform daily job duties. He described the VPN connection as incredibly slow so he decided to put all the necessary files on a Portable hard drive to take with him while he works in the field.

Just another end user finding ways to “Help” the business be more productive and save time right? My heart sank as this scenario is one that I see all too often while working with small business across the country. I quickly described my major concerns with what he was doing:

• Data Exposure - Could be a big liability for the business

• Data Loss - If the portable is lost or stolen all the time, effort and data will be lost

• Are others doing the same thing - poorly implemented or designed systems quickly lead to “Shadow IT”

• Most current version of document is not available to anyone else while stored on the portable HDD

This scenario is ideal for a Cloud solution. I advised my friend that a portable HDD was not the right solution in this scenario and discussed the ways a Cloud Solution would be ideal, specifically Microsoft Office 365. My friend also advised that they didn’t have much of an “IT Support” budget and that was part of the reason they were still in the IT “Stone Age”.

So how does a Microsoft O365 solution fit the bill in this scenario?

• Eliminates the need for VPN - Remote workers as well as on site workers will securely access services and data via TLS internet connections.

• Safe and Secure data storage - Since all data can be stored in OneDrive or OneDrive for Business it is secured and “Backed Up” by Microsoft. If business policy allows for data synchronization to local devices we have the ability to use MDM policy to ensure that data is encrypted on local disk and the ability to remotely wipe device if lost or stolen

• Co-Authoring and Collaboration capabilities thru Microsoft Teams allow users to work on documents together in real time from any where in the world.

• Since all of these services are hosted in Microsoft’s cloud almost all of the support is delivered by Microsoft and is included with the cost of license. Most of the business expense comes from the initial cost of migrating to the cloud solution and initial training of Admin and Staff. This solution also allows your support team or third party IT staff to easily service help desk request from anywhere and this drives down the cost.

Small business across America is operating on tight budgets and historically they skimp on IT support and systems. It pains me to be called in once disaster strikes as the cost and liability of the Data loss/exposure often bankrupt the business. If this sounds familiar to you take a moment to contact us so we can discuss your situation.

Robert “Ben” Stewart | Principal Consultant

I have studied technology for over 15 years now and those studies provided an education (Eat ‘em up Cats!!!), career and a wonderful income. July of 2018 I was traveling for business and realized that I had been away from my Family for over 90 days that year and started to feel a lot of anxiety around missing them and concern that I was a slave to my job. Even though I have been able to earn a wonderful income, I have never been concerned with saving. Spending, this is an area where few could compete with my ability!

On my way from Providence, RI to my Hotel in Boston at around midnight I was trying to stay awake so I flipped on AM Radio and I hear this guy yelling at his caller about being broke and making stupid financial decisions. It was like he was yelling directly at me! I was fully engaged in the dialog at this point and heard a phrase that to this day is stuck in my head, “You cant’t out-earn your stupidity”. That phrase summed up what I had been feeling for at least the past 5 years and trying to disprove for at least the last 20 years.

Upon arrival at my hotel, I jumped on the internet and searched for @DaveRamsey to see what this guy was selling. Fast forward to today, it has been about 16 months and my life is forever changed! I have eliminated over 58,000.00 in debt, saved over 15,000.00 and hosted Financial Peace helping others eliminate over 40,000 in debt.

Something about getting my finances under control allowed me to look up and see things with much greater clarity. This clarity ignited a fire in my soul and I want to help others find this same sense of freedom.