Parenting often means managing a small network. It’s challenging because there’s no built-in way to apply the same parental controls across all of the tablets, laptops, and other devices your family uses. That’s where Circle comes in. It helps you effortless manage content and screen time for every family member.


Circle is a 3-inch white cube that connects to your Wi-Fi network. The $99 device allows you to filter content, add time restrictions, and see activity reports for every device on your network. It’s like God Mode for your household’s Wi-Fi devices. You simply plug in Circle’s power cord, use your iPhone or iPad to connect it to your router over Wi-Fi, and set up each family member’s settings in the Circle app. (Sorry Android and other non-iOS users, Android and web-based setup and management are still in the works, which is disappointing but common with first-generation products.) Circle can manage not only tablets and laptops, but also gaming consoles and smart home devices too—anything that connects over Wi-Fi.

During my 10-minute setup, I created my 9-year old daughter’s profile, connected three devices to her profile, and set the filter level to “Kid.” The kid filter level automatically blocks social media, mature content, gambling, dating, and malicious content by default. It also blocks certain app and site categories, such as those categorized as business, chat and forums, email, government and politics, and news. So it’s basically one tap to block most of the things parents are concerned about when it comes to kids’ online usage. Other age group filters include pre-K and teen. You can toggle any of the settings on or off and add custom filters.


Circle Gives You Truly Universal Parental Controls

Parental controls are nothing new. All operating systems offer some way to restrict the kinds of content your kids can access and/or how much screen time they’re allowed to have. (Screen time, by the way, isn’t necessarily rotting your kids’ brains, but too much of it can eat into kids’ time to do other healthy things like play outside or sleep well at night. And if you’re a parent, you’re probably concerned about what dark corners of the web your child might wander down.)


The problem is, with traditional methods you have to set up the parental controls on every device you own. With the exception of Windows 10’s awesome parental controls, which follow your child’s Microsoft account settings across Windows devices, parental controls are a per device feature. That means I’d have to go through the individual settings for the iPad, the Chromebook, the Windows laptop, and the Mac my kid has access to. (And if I really wanted to go crazy, I could set up the parental controls for the smart TV, the Wii, the PS4, and more.) I can’t even imagine doing this for two kids’ worth of gadgets, let alone more than two.


Also important: the settings for every system are all different—there’s no consistency. iOS, for example, lets you restrict particular apps and the kinds of media your child can access, but doesn’t let you limit how much time they can spend on the phone or tablet. Chrome OS only lets you block or allow specific websites, not apps or time limits. While you can use OpenDNS or your router’s parental controls, these only set web site filters, not specific apps as well. Most routers’ parental controls usually only limit time usage or particular URLs by device. (And let’s face it, how many parents are going into their router administrative controls to blacklist individual sites?)

With Circle, I have a uniform, higher level of control—settings I can instantly apply or modify across any or all devices, managing both content and time use (with some caveats—see the limitations section below). I could turn off dating sites, for example, for a teenage or younger kid, restrict my middle schooler to apps like Disney, and turn off all filtering but enable ad blocking for the devices belong to us adults.


Fence Off As Much (or As Little) of the Internet As You Want


Even if your kid already sticks to only kid-friendly sites and apps, Circle is extra peace of mind. To be honest, I’m not all that concerned about where my 9-year old daughter goes on the internet. It helps that she has a natural aversion to gross mature content (like kissing and zombies) and knows when something is crossing the line for her age group. She’s also usually in the same room with me when she’s on a gadget and if a curse word gets uttered in one of those Minecraft video blogs she subscribes to, I just have to give her a look and she’ll switch to a curse-free video. But it gives me peace of mind to know that the content controls keep her from coming across inappropriate stuff by accident. By blocking off news sites, for example, she’s not exposed to headlines or photos showcasing the many difficult issues we’re facing today—and I can discuss them with her when the time is right and in a way that’s appropriate for us rather than the media being her first exposure to these issues.



You can turn on ad blocking, web browsers’ safe search, and YouTube restricted mode for individual or multiple devices with Circle as well.


Bring Back Family Dinners by Pausing the Internet


The internet time management feature is what drew me to this device the most—both for her and for myself. A while ago I tried to institute a “no tech during dinner” policy, which worked well at first but then we all forgot about it and went back to our old ways of eating in front of the TV or in front of our individual screens. (Myself included. When I’m on a tight deadline, I eat at my desk more often than I care to admit.) Now, when dinner’s on the table, I just hit the pause button on the app and there are no questions asked. It’s building a good habit for us.



Bedtime is the big one for me. Screen usage too close to bedtime ruins sleep, but on school nights, there’s so little time for my daughter to catch up on her apps and videos to-do list. It’s not just entertainment, she goes to math sites and learns about science and history on BrainPop when she’s in the mood, so I really don’t mind when she’s plugged in on school nights. The “just 15 more minutes left in this video” conundrum, however, makes it hard to enforce a screens-off time before bed, particularly when I’m not good at managing my own time. Circle helps: It warns you that bedtime is coming up and then turns off internet access at that set time. It’s like it’s set in stone. You (and your kids) can’t argue with it.


I, card-carrying sleep procrastinator, am using this for myself too. I set up a profile for myself, connected my devices, and now have this firm bedtime to make sure I get enough sleep every night. Of course, I can go into the app and change my bedtime settings, but it’s an extra barrier to that bad habit. The funny thing is, I don’t even wait until that “looks like it’s bedtime” screen comes up. I know that there’s this piece of hardware on my network that’s going to cut off my internet access at exactly 10:55pm, so I better hustle now.

What Circle Can’t Do

Circle is an awesome family device—the first of its kind, actually. (It launched originally on Kickstarter in 2013 but didn’t get fully funded, perhaps because of the $195 backing cost at the time. Then Disney bought it.) However, there are drawbacks to this first version. The company is already working on fixing most of them, but they’re worth knowing about now:

You can’t connect Circle to more than one network. We have a 5Ghz and a 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi network with our dual-band router. Circle can work with both frequencies, but only one at a time. So when my daughter is connected to the Mordor2.4 network and Circle shuts off her internet access, she can switch to the Mordor5 network and still go online. (She found that out of course. So now I have to change one of the network’s passwords so she can only use one of them.) If you have more than one Wi-Fi network at home, all of the devices you want to control have to be on the Wi-Fi network you put the Circle on. And your kids can’t be able to get on the other network!

We have a 5Ghz and a 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi network with our dual-band router. Circle can work with both frequencies, but only one at a time. So when my daughter is connected to the Mordor2.4 network and Circle shuts off her internet access, she can switch to the Mordor5 network and still go online. (She found that out of course. So now I have to change one of the network’s passwords so she can only use one of them.) If you have more than one Wi-Fi network at home, all of the devices you want to control have to be on the Wi-Fi network you put the Circle on. And your kids can’t be able to get on the other network! Circle doesn’t work over cellular data. This isn’t the best solution for teens with smartphones who can just switch to the 4G network to stay connected. Circle doesn’t manage or monitor cellular data access. Circle founder Jelani Memory, however, told me that 4G management is coming in the first Quarter of 2016 as a subscription-based, separate product.

This isn’t the best solution for teens with smartphones who can just switch to the 4G network to stay connected. Circle doesn’t manage or monitor cellular data access. Circle founder Jelani Memory, however, told me that 4G management is coming in the first Quarter of 2016 as a subscription-based, separate product. You can’t manage multiple users on shared devices. Right now you have to assign each device to one user. If you share a device with others, though, you can put the laptop or tablet or other device under the general “Home” user profile so universal settings get applied to everyone who uses that device. It’s not ideal. The company is looking into supporting different user logins for the same device—but there’s no ETA for it yet.


It’s worth noting that the Circle team has built in a few failsafes for clever (i.e., sneaky) kids. There’s no off button for the child to turn the Circle off. If the kid unplugs the Circle, it will still work via the internal battery. And you’ll get a push notification if the Circle goes offline, gets turned off, gets disconnected from your network, has a new administrator account, or has been factory reset. It’s also a small, unobtrusive-looking block that you can hide somewhere (it’ll work as long as it has power and is connected to your router).

Bottom Line: A Clever Device for Families (But Very Much a First-Generation Attempt)

Despite its limitations, Circle can help your family find more balance when it comes to screen time. It’s made managing multiple devices much easier for me, and the activity reports help me keep an eye on how my daughter is using the tech in our home. As it currently works, Circle is probably best for families with young (pre-teen) kids who have their own devices. It’s for kids like my daughter who thrive on structure and might inadvertently access inappropriate content with their web searches, parents who don’t want to configure every parental control setting on every device, and people like me who could also use a nudge to turn off that screen already.


Could we manage our kids’ and our own screen time without buying a $99 gadget? Of course. We could go into the individual parental control settings of each device (though some platforms are very limited) or be more vigilant when our kids are online. Enterprising kids will get around any wall you build. That’s where parenting comes in: You’ll still need build the trust and rapport with your kids needed for them to accept that these limits are for their own good. You’ll still need to teach them the best (safest and proper) way to use the internet and technology. That’s more important than any gadget or parental control you can install. For the fine details like content filtering and setting time limits, though, Circle is another tool you can add to your arsenal.