We were very pleased to see the Apple Event 2020 announce a new feature, Family Setup, which enables a parent to pair their own phone to a child’s Apple watch and stay in touch by phone, or text message. To quote Apple it “enables greater independence for your kid. You get safety communication features in a device that can be managed responsibly, for example you can specify which contacts your kids can communicate with when using messages and more”. This was a feature that we built into our smartphone for kids, marketed in Europe as Blabloo (www.blabloo.net) and in Asia as Geniora phone (www.geniora.com), which was first showcased at the Mobile World Congress in 2018 and captured in a BBC interview at the time. Welcome to the party Apple, and good to see that smart features that help a parent rest assured about the whereabouts of their children as well as managing who can contact them are now being used widely. Our solution, however, goes way beyond this and allows the parent remotely to decide when any app can be used by the child and what internet pages they can see and much more. Protecting children from inappropriate content and keeping them safe should be a basic right for children and we are pleased to have helped lead the way on this.
