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How to Make Your Tablet Safe for Kids

Have speck iguy ipad caseyou have recently upgraded to a new tablet and want to hand off your older model to your lucky kids?

That’s a good idea, but before you do there are a number of steps you should take before you let go of that older tablet. Even a beat up, older model is still useful, albeit a bit slower than your new tablet, but you might want to make sure it’s safe for your kids to use.

To Do
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Get a sturdy case

Kids drop things – a lot. (Well, so do I, but that’s not important.) A rubberized case will protect your tablet from most drops, so it’s well worth the investment.

Tablets come on all shapes and sizes, and so do cases. The Speck iGuy case for the iPad shown above is one option, but if you need to look further afield, here are a few websites where you can buy a variety of cases:

Perform a factory reset

If you’ve been using your old tablet for any length of time, chances are good that there are any number of things on your tablet that you don’t want other people to see.

It might be as simple as work emails you don’t want anyone to read, or perhaps you don’t want your reading habits shared with the world. In any case, the best way to make sure that all of your personal documents are removed is to reset the tablet to factory settings. With most tablets this will wipe all of the internal storage, remove any apps you’ve installed, and delete any changes you’ve made to the settings.

The steps involved vary between tablets, but you can probably find the reset option under the Settings menu on your tablet. Just make sure that you save any important files first.

Install a Parental Control App

If you would like to restrict what a kid can do with the tablet (block games, inappropriate content, and so on) then you should install a parental control app. I’m not sure I would take this step, but you might want to. There are a lot of websites, Youtube videos, and apps that aren’t appropriate for small children.

There are a number of apps which would work. One Android app you could try is Kids Place. I came across it when I reviews the ClicknKids tablet, and on that tablet it blocked access to any app which had not been selected and approved by the parent. I thought it worked well, but if you don’t like it there are many other alternatives in Google Play.

Of course if you have a Kindle Fire, that tablet has parental controls built in. So does the iPad.

Block in app purchases

We’ve all read the horror stories about kids running up thousands of dollars in charges, right? You don’t want that to happen to you, so you should probably make sure that your tablet asks for a password before any purchases.

On Android tablets, both Google and Amazon have a parental control option under the settings menu which can be set to require a password before any purchases can be made. On the Kindle Fire, this setting is found with the other parental control options.

On the iPad, I would suggest a different approach. I would set up a separate account just for the kid’s iPad. This is extra work, but it will allow you to remove any chance that the kid might run up charges in iTunes.

If you need to make purchases for the kid’s iPad, you can buy a gift card with the parent account and give it to the child account.

Install a Kid Friendly Web Browser

As a final step, I’m going to suggest that you install an alternate web browser. There are any number of child safe web browsers in Google Play and iTunes.

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The 5 suggestions in the above post are really just a start on what can be done to child-proof a tablet. If you have any suggestions for other apps to install, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

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Comments


carly February 14, 2014 um 9:33 pm

In my experience, the iPad has the worst parental controls out of any tablet device. Kindle Fire is excellent, Android has lots of add on options and Windows Phone has Kids Corner. IOS has a crapton of settings that you need to adjust manually every time.

just my two cents, but when my son is old enough to use a tablet it will be a Fire. He will need to be much older before I give him an IOS device, simply because the controls are not as fine grained.

Nate Hoffelder February 15, 2014 um 8:18 am

I haven’t tried to set up an iPad, but I am impressed with the number of sandbox apps for Android. Several were pretty easy to use.

The Kindle Fire was another matter. The parental controls were relatively simple, but Kindle Freetime was not easy to set up. I actually gave up half way through.


Don't Like Amazon's New Kids' Tablet? Here are 5 Alternatives – The Digital Reader September 19, 2014 um 10:32 am

[…] are X kids tablets that you might consider in place of the Fire HD Kids Edition. (You might also retrofit your existing tablet as a hand-me-down, but this might not work for […]


Chris November 22, 2015 um 8:06 pm

I love kindle free time, I have 4 account through it depending on the age of each of my kids. Very easy to set up and manage. Control exactly what is allowed and what isn’t, time settings are a big plus so no matter what they can’t access it after or before a set time. Then app and book time limitis are awesome, we leave books available all day but apps have an hour limit.


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[…] Along with the usual Google apps, this tablet has an app for the video service Vudu. It does have an app which you can use to set up parent/kid modes, but it's a third party app from a company called Zoodles. You can get the app yourself and install it on just about any Android tablet or smartphone. In fact, it's one of the steps you would take when making a tablet safe for kids. […]


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