SAFE BY DESIGN · EPISODE 29

The Ten-Minute Family Check

Nothing had gone wrong that week, which is exactly why Riya picked it. The best time to check is when nobody is worried.

Safe by Design, episode 29: The Ten-Minute Family Check. The family tablet inside an open ring; "Ten minutes a month" stops at a yellow pause sign: Ten minutes. Every month.

The first-Sunday settings check had been on the calendar since Tara's app update. After the month they'd had, Riya wanted it to grow into a whole-family routine, still small enough to actually happen.

So on Sunday morning, breakfast plates pushed aside, she put the kitchen timer in the middle of the table, set it to ten minutes, and gave Arjun the job of watching it. Tara got a sheet of paper with five questions on it.

A five-item checklist: privacy, who can see each profile; permissions, anything asking for more; purchases, does every device ask first; updates, anything out of date or unused; family rules, still working for everyone.

Dev brought the family tablet, his old phone that Arjun now used for games, and a fresh pot of tea. Tara brought her own phone. “Ten minutes,” Dev said. “Then pancakes.”

Arjun pressed start. Nobody expected to find much.

The rest of this episode is for members. Membership is free.