Google has announced a new School Time feature for Android smartphones, tablets, and select watches running Wear OS. The company says it has focused on developing tools to help each family set their own ground rules. The result was the School Time feature, providing tailored supervision experiences for teens. The feature first debuted on the FitBit Ace LTE smart wearable earlier this year.
School Time for Android Devices: What is it?
School time enables parents to set their child’s personal device to a dedicated home screen with limited functionality during school hours, which helps reduce distractions during class. Parents can schedule and select which apps are allowed during School time in Family Link, our parental controls app. Parents will also have the option to allow calls or texts from specific contacts.
In addition, School time can also be turned on outside of class when it may be time to focus or take a break from screens. For teens who are not supervised by a parent through Family Link, Google offers Focus mode on Android devices to prevent notifications and limit distractions during a specific time period.
Aside from School Time, Google is developing additional settings for teens and teen supervision, such as new Supervision tools in YouTube. In an update rolling out later this summer, parents and teens will be able to link their accounts, enabling parents to gain visibility into their teens’ activity on YouTube.
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Further, in Family Link, supervision can be enabled for all ages. This helps give parents flexibility to determine the apps, products and experiences their teens can use, while also continuing to monitor their activity and set digital ground rules such as screen time limits or location sharing.
For those under 18 years of age, Google has default safety measures in place. This includes turning SafeSearch on, implementing content restrictions and turning autoplay off on YouTube. It recently introduced new safeguards that limit recommendations of videos with content that could be problematic, especially for teens, if viewed in repetition – such as content related to body image.
School Time for Android Devices: Availability
Over the next year, Google will expand School time to even more devices including select Android phones, tablets and Samsung Galaxy Watches. FitBit Ace LTE is already having the feature. Surprisingly, Google doesn’t mention support for its own Pixel Watch as of now.