How to make your iPad kid-friendly

[MUSIC] While they can be great entertainment or educational tools for children, handing over your iPad to a kid opens up a world of potential problems, such as a broken tablet, accidental internet purchases, or inappropriate content. Fortunately, kid-proofing your iPad is a quick and straight forward process. Here's how to do it. Before ever considering putting your iPad in the hands of a child, you should first put it in a protective case. Even a thin and stylish case can help protect against small bumps and drops. But if a kid will be handling your iPad regularly, you may want to purchase a more rugged shock proof case. Apple has built parental controls directly into IOS To turn on Restrictions, go to Settings, General Restrictions, and hit Enable Restrictions. Enter a four digit pin different from the pin you use to unlock your iPad and confirm it. Restrictions are divided into five categories, Allow, Allowed Content, Privacy, Allow Changes, and Game Center. In the allow section you can restrict access to, Safari, Camera, Siri, FaceTime, AirDrop, iTunes Store, Apple Music Connect, and News. It's up to you to determine what your kid should be allowed to use, but the biggest feature here is the option to restrict the ability to install or delete apps, and make in-app purchases. In the allowed content section you can filter explicit content from music and news, or choose which ratings are appropriate for movies and TV. You can also disable explicit language and web searches from Siri, filter apps by age limit in the app store, and limit adult content from Safari. Of course Safari will be the toughest app to restrict without completely disabling it. So Apple has also included the ability to blacklist and or whitelist specific websites. Privacy allows you to restrict communication and other connectivity options of the iPad. You can disable location services And to restrict the ability to make changes or which have access to contacts, calendars, reminders, photos, share my location, blue tooth, microphone, speech recognition, Twitter, Facebook and media libraries. This for example can prevent any new Apps from gaining access to your Twitter accounts or calendar. Under allow changes you choose what your child can modify on the device. You can restrict the ability to add, remove, or modify mail, calendar, and contact accounts, or change which apps can use background app refresh. For younger ears the volume limit option is useful to make sure your child wont listen to audio louder than they should. Last, but not least are the game center options Here you can easily disable multiplayer games, the ability to add friends and scree recording. Games are one of the biggest reasons kids want an iPad and these settings go a little further than the regular privacy setting to make sure your kids are safe when gaming. And lastly you may want to keep in mind that if you restrict your kids from downloading their own apps You will have to do it for them. The App Store has an entire section dedicated to kid friendly and parent approved apps. Age appropriate apps are separated into three different sections. Kids ages five and under, kids ages six to eight, and kids ages nine to eleven. Here you will find apps such as YouTube Kids, PBS Kids, and Nick Jr. as well as a healthy selection of educational apps and games. For more tips and tricks, and other how-tos, be sure to check out CNET.com/how-to