GoKawiilMishaal Rahman / Android Authority
For years now, Android and Google have offered a way to set up parental controls on phones to manage apps, services, and access to information for kids and teenagers before they reach adulthood. It’s a necessary and commendable feature, but it stops short of doing something else that Google needs to be thinking about: parents.
My mom and dad are a little past 70 years old, my aunt is in her mid-60s, and so is my mother-in-law. I’m the one managing all their Android phones, remotely, from Paris to Lebanon, and yet, I can’t manage the things I wish I could manage. I don’t want to take their autonomy away, but I always wished there was a way to lock certain things or require my permission to approve them. Let me explain.
Do you wish there was a way to manage your parents' Android phones remotely? 17 votes Yes. I need to save them from themselves. 88 % Maybe. It's not an essential feature. 0 % No. They're adults. 6 % I don't know / this doesn't concern me. 6 %
My dad hard reset his phone 5 times inadvertently
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
If I’m advocating for the need to have some level of management over the phones of dependent adults in your family, it’s because I’ve been repeatedly burned by my dad’s uncanny tendency to entirely reset his Android phones. It happened four times on his old OnePlus 9, and I blamed it on a OnePlus recovery bug that I saw pretty often in support forums, until it happened again on his Pixel 7 Pro.
Turns out he was sometimes pressing the power and volume up buttons at the same time, for some reason. But long enough to trigger recovery mode? And how did he end up doing a full reset there, knowing that any time he sees a screen he doesn’t understand, he calls me? That’s one of my life’s mysteries. I’ve had to guide him to set up his phone from scratch five times, remotely. I’m just tired.
I just think that people shouldn’t be able to completely reset phones like that. There should be a password requirement or a safeguard that stops someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing from entirely clearing out their phone. (Yes, I know the biggest safeguard is getting into recovery in the first place, but… I’m just going to point at my dad.)
I want to be able to apply an update remotely or stop them from downloading an app they shouldn't.
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