Apple today released an iOS 13.3 beta to developers for testing purposes, and the new update introduces Communication Limits for Screen Time, a feature Apple promised was coming to iOS 13 in a future update.
With Communication Limits, parents can control who their children are able to contact. Communication Limits apply to the Phone, FaceTime, and Messages apps, along with iCloud contacts.
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There are settings to control communication during Screen Time, with options to allow just contacts or everyone to be contacted. There's also a toggle that either allows or disallows users to be added to a group chat when a contact or family member is in the group.
There's also a separate setting for communication limits during downtime, which is also able to be set to everyone or just specific contacts.
Finally, there's a toggle for allowing or disallowing contact editing, which can change some of the contact settings.
Regardless of Communication Limits settings, calls to emergency numbers are always allowed and will turn off communication limits for 24 hours when placed.
With the Communication Limits feature, parents will be able to better control who their children are contacting during different periods of the day, cutting off access to friends during school, for example.
There are other smaller tweaks in iOS 13.3, including an option to disable Memoji and Animoji stickers from showing up on the emoji keyboard and a change to the Apple Watch app that shifts the Digital Crown on the icon from black to gray.
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My second thought: what if the kid (for example) dials "999" in the US? Would that unlock things, since it's an emergency service number outside the US? I suspect/hope that Apple have it localized (so only "911" would unlock the limits in the US), but for liability reasons, they may have a whitelist of all possible emergency numbers.