Quick start by age

Why age is the right starting point

The same device needs a different setup at six, at ten and at fifteen, and the gap between them is not how strict you are. It is what you are protecting against.

Under about seven, the job is keeping accidental content and accidental spending away from a child who is not looking for either. Through the middle years it shifts to who can contact them. With teenagers, most of the value is in the conversation and in the account security behind it, because a determined fifteen-year-old will get around a control you set without telling them about it.

Work the list for the age your child is now, not the age you are dreading. A setting that has always been there is easier to keep than one that arrives out of nowhere at fourteen, which reads as punishment however it was meant. Loosening something you set early is a conversation; introducing it late is an argument.

None of these lists take an evening. Each is deliberately short enough to finish in one sitting, because the setup that actually protects a child is the one that gets done rather than the thorough one that stays on a list.