It’s not easy to keep an eye on what kind of content your kids are accessing on their iOSdevices, or how often they’re accessing it. But Circle with Disney is here to help. The little cube works alongside your home network and allows to specify how much Wi-Fi time your kids should get, and how they use it.
Circle started as a Kickstarter project from Circle Media, but it didn’t raise anywhere near its funding goal. However, it did earn something that turned out to be much more important: A partnership with Disney. Now Circle with Disney is available for $99.99, and it’s ideal for parents whose children own iOS devices.
Once connected to your home network, Circle gives you complete control over Wi-Fi connections. You can specify what kind of content your kids can access, and how long they should have Wi-Fi connectivity for. You can also “pause” Wi-Fi connectivity throughout the house to prevent connections when necessary.
If you think your kids are spending too much time on YouTube or Netflix, and not getting enough homework done, for instance, you can limit them to just one or two hours of Wi-Fi connectivity each evening. You can also specify which content should be blocked.
Circle also lets you monitor not only what your kids are doing on the internet, but also which apps they’re using to connect to it — and even the types of content they are accessing.
“Even more important, though, is the Disney partnership, which gives Circle not just added visibility and a stash of age-appropriate videos, music, and more (an included app called MyCircle will deliver “a curated selection of Disney content”) but access to the family-focused technical minds at Disney Consumer Products and Disney Interactive,” explains Wired.
Circle isn’t the first device that lets you monitor and control what other users are doing on your Wi-Fi network, but it is the first device backed by Disney. It’s also not a router, so it’s easy to use, and doesn’t require you to ditch your existing setup.
“One of the decisions we made really early on was not to be the router,” says Circle Media founder Jelani Memory. “People treat their routers like they treat their water heaters; they don’t want to touch it unless it’s broken, and if it’s broken, they’re really frustrated.”
Circle simple acts as a man in the middle, then, monitoring the data that’s passed to and from your router from your kids’ devices, and giving you the ability to grant and deny permissions. And it’s completely secure, with end-to-end encryption for filtering that prevents anyone from seeing your data.
You can find out more about Circle and buy your own on the Circle with Disney website.
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