Trusting your child with an expensive piece of consumer technology is a risky move.

One dad, journalist Evan Osnos from Washington DC, handing his iPad over to his son meant being locked out of it for nearly half a century.

Posting on Twitter, Osnos said that his three-year-old had entered the wrong passcode on the Apple gadget one too many times. The iPad locked itself and informed him that he could try again to enter the correct passcode in 25-and-a-half million minutes. Or roughly 47 years.

Uh, this looks fake but, alas, it’s our iPad today after 3-year-old tried (repeatedly) to unlock. Ideas? pic.twitter.com/5i7ZBxx9rW — Evan Osnos (@eosnos) April 6, 2019


Apple’s gadgets increase the amount of time between attempts depending on how many times an incorrect passcode has been entered. So Evan’s son was probably hammering away at it for some time before passing it back to dad.



When Osnos put a picture of the tablet’s lock screen up on Twitter and asked for ideas about unlocking it, he got a flood of responses.

‘I would just wait it out,’ one advised.

‘Time travel seems to be your best bet,’ said another.

Or alternatively, someone wrote that he should: ‘Make it a gift for the kid’s 50th birthday. It should unlock by then.’

iPads – not for giving to kids (iStockphoto)

Thankfully, there were also a few useful replies as it seems like this is a problem that has occurred before. Apple even has guidelines to help people reset their devices – although it’ll wipe all the data on it first.

If this does happen to you, you need to connect your iPad (or iPhone) to your computer and run iTunes, then while it’s connected, you can force restart it.

A pop-up should appear giving you a choice of Restore or Update. Choosing restore means iTunes will download the software back on to your iPad and you proceed to set it up as normal.

Perhaps this can be looked on as a cautionary tale about backing up your data. Or, just not letting your kids play with iPads.