Time Limit Alerts (Family Plans)

Parents naturally want to receive alerts for any and every type of objectionable content viewed on their children’s devices. But sometimes the problem isn't what is being viewed on your child’s new tablet, but rather when it's being viewed. Even the safest YouTube video or an educational game can cease to be helpful late at night, or during other predetermined “screen-free” times.

That's where the Time Limit Alerts feature offers a unique value to our Family plan members. Time Limit Alerts provide a helpful coaching tool to establish healthy patterns of self-discipline.

And while we’ve especially designed Time Limit Alerts to be used by parents for their children, we’ve also found it to be incredibly helpful for anyone (at any age) desiring accountability in their own time management. So if you’re a parent or other adult on the Family Plan, you can benefit from this feature too!

If the Accountable2You monitoring app detects activity on a device outside of the allowed timeframe you select, the accountability partners for that user's devices will receive an alert.

Access Time Limit Alerts

1

Log into your A2U account online here and select Family from the navigation menu.

2

Locate the user for which you'd like to establish Time Limit Alerts.

3

Select Options by the user's name and then choose Time Limit Alerts from the dropdown.

Enable Time Limit Alerts

1

In the time graph, enable the hours (red) for which you'd like to receive Time Limit Alerts. (Notice that these time slots are available in 30-minute increments.)

2

Select Save to complete your changes.

3

Repeat the above process in this article for any other Family members.

And rest assured—content-related, objectionable activity alerts will continue to send, regardless of the Time Limit Alert preferences selected here.

Review Time Limit Alerts

There are two important things to remember when reviewing Time Limit Alerts:

1. Half-hour increments

Time Limit Alerts are sent in half-hour increments. If any activity has occurred within the past half hour, an email is sent to the accountability partners for that device.

2. Alerts represent device activity, not necessarily user interaction

Remember that our monitoring app is tracking activity, not specifically who produced that activity. This means that things like notifications, incoming messages, and device updates can produce “false positives” showing that the device is in use when it's actually sitting untouched. Please do exercise your best judgment as you review alerts (more tips on that here), and remember that accountability is all about the conversation. When in doubt, we always recommend talking with the device user for whom you’re a partner to better understand the context of what happened.