A journalist and dad from Washington D.C. recently gave his three-year-old his iPad to play with.
And he soon realized why this was a huge mistake.
When Evan Osnos’s toddler handed him back his iPad, it had been locked for 25 and a half million minutes.
…which is over 47 years to be exact.
If you do not have an iPhone, you should know that for every incorrect password entered — Apple’s security locks phones with increasing amounts of time — which means that Evan’s son must have logged in some serious time to get a total of 48 years.
Naturally, he took to Twitter to seek counsel on how to fix his tech issue.
Twitter responded accordingly, with folks commenting:
“Reboot your 3 y.o.”
“Yeah, turns out the Freedom software for an iPad is a toddler.”
“Just wait the 48 years.”
“Put it in a bag of rice.”
“Time travel seems to be your best bet.”
“Do you still have the receipt for your 3 year old?”
“Pretty sure you could create an account to let everyone watch the countdown… for the next half century.”
“Did the 3yr old get his hands on the iPad just as the 12,000,000 minutes from the previous lock expired?”
“It that’s not an advertisement for birth control I don’t know what is.”
“1 – Cryogenically freeze yourself for 48 years
2 – Hope that people in the future have mastered time-travel
3 – Go back in time 52 years
4 – Make sure NOT to have a kid this time around…”
“Sell it online on ebay: NEW, used only once.”
“Adoption?”
If you should ever find yourself in this unfortunate situation, Apple has a few tips on how to reset it.
But it should be noted if it is not backed up you can say goodbye to all of your data.
If you do have a backup, Apple recommends you first connect your iPad or iPhone to your computer, open iTunes while it’s connected and force restart it.
A pop-up should appear asking you to either Restore or Update.
Choose Restore and iTunes will then download software for your device.
After this is finished, you can go to set up and use your device again.
On the subject of kids and technology, according to The Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood (CCFC) the organization has been very worried about the increasing number of hours that today’s kids spend in front of screens.
They have collected research that reveals what the average amount of screen time looks like for today’s children.
| 2 to 5 years olds | 2.2 hours per day |
| Pre-Schoolers | 4.1 – 4.6 hours per day |
| 8 to 18 years olds | 7.5 hours per day |
Other research indicates that almost 30% of infants under 12 months are already watching TV and videos for 90 minutes a day on average and by the time these children are two, 64% of them are watching TV and videos for over two hours a day.
It has also been discovered that when young kids use computer tablets such as iPads, time spent watching TV and videos remain unaffected — which means using computer tablets like iPads does not cut down on time spent watching TV and videos.
Instead, it increases the overall number of hours kids are watching screens each day.
To learn more about what is a safe amount of screen-time for kids, you can click here to learn more.
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