1. Update it before anything else

While the phone is still yours, open Settings → General → Software Update and install whatever's waiting. New iPhones often ship months after they were built; the first update closes whatever was found since. Handing over a patched phone is the difference between a fresh start and a fresh exploit.

2. Sign in with the right account

During setup, the phone asks for an Apple Account. This is the trap moment — don't type yours. A parent's ID on a child's phone shares email, messages, photos, and payment method in both directions.

If the child is under 13, create a Child Account through Family Sharing. If they're older, they create their own account and you invite it into the family group. The account decision shapes everything else, so it comes before everything else.

3. Set up Family Sharing

If you haven't already, open Settings → [Your Name] → Family and set up your family group. Family Sharing is the control channel for everything that follows: approvals, Screen Time management, shared purchases. Add your partner as a parent/guardian, not just a member — approvals and Screen Time changes should survive one parent's dead battery.

4. Screen Time, from your device

Here's the step most parents do backwards. Don't configure Screen Time on the child's phone. Pick up your own iPhone, open Settings → Family → [Child's Name] → Screen Time, and follow the prompts. If iOS asks to upgrade parental controls, say yes and review the settings it shows you.

Set the Screen Time passcode during this flow — on your device, different from any passcode the child knows. This one code guards every limit you're about to configure.

Configure the broad shape now — a school schedule, a night schedule, rough Time Allowances — and adjust later. Done is better than perfect.

5. Apps & Websites

Under the same Family screen, tap Apps & Websites:

  • Ask to Buy: under Restrictions, turn on Require Purchase Approval. Every download now lands on your phone first.
  • Web filtering: under Restrictions → Filtering, pick the level — Ask to Browse for young kids, Limit Adult Websites for older ones.
  • App Store: choose whether installing apps is allowed, and set an age rating ceiling.

6. Contacts and Communication Safety

Still under the child's Family screen: Allowed Contacts — decide whether your child communicates with contacts only, and whether you manage their contact list. Then Communication Safety — turn it on. It blurs nudity, gore, and violence in shared photos and videos, on your child's side, without reporting to you.

7. Privacy pass

Open Settings → Privacy & Security on the child's phone and walk the list: location, camera, microphone, photos. Most apps work fine with far less than they request. You don't need to be paranoid — you need to be present, once, at the start.

8. Device security

Six-digit passcode (not a birthday), Face ID, Auto-Lock at one minute, Find My iPhone on, recovery contact set. The details and reasoning are in how to secure a child's iPhone — it's the final lock on everything above.

9. Test it like your child will

Ten minutes of testing saves the "Mom, it's broken" of week one. Hold the phone yourself and check:

  • Try downloading a free app from the App Store — the approval should ping your phone, not install.
  • Open a site your filter should block — it should stop.
  • Check the school schedule applies to the right hours, and that essentials (calls, messages) still work inside it.
  • Send a message from a contact that shouldn't be allowed, if you set contact limits.

10. The handover conversation

The phone is given, not smuggled. Sit down, walk through what's configured and why — every setting, out loud, including the ones they won't love. Agree on what happens when something goes wrong, and when limits get renegotiated. Write it down. Then hand it over.

The first week, check in lightly and often — not the settings, the kid. For the strategic view of what you just configured, see the iPhone safety guide for parents; for the full reference of every setting, our parental controls guide has it, and the childproofing pass in how to set up a child's first iPhone covers the same ground for a younger child.